The permanent campaign is killing people

Can you believe it? These two loons want to be president.

I’m old enough that I remember the days when people intending to run for president would “throw their hat in the ring” the year before and form a committee with a skeleton staff and then really get going the year the election was to take place. 

No more.  It’s just over three years until November of 2024 and already the Republican loons are out there running.  Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida – he’s running.  Governor Gregg Abbott of Texas – him, too.  Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota is said to be at least thinking about it. 

Isn’t that what you do at first, think about running?  Political cud-chewers who follow these things are saying other usual suspect loons are also thinking about it – Senator Ted Cruz from Texas; Senator Marco Rubio from Florida; Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri, Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from Kansas; former Vice President Mike Pence from Indiana; former U.N. Ambassador Niki Haley; Senator Rick Scott of Florida.

The one thing none of these potential candidates is doing is appearing to be too eager, at least not while the Nemesis Who Shall Not Be Named is out there lobbing grenades into his crowds of unmasked followers at the occasional rallies he’s holding around the country.  No potential Republican candidate wants to jam a stick into that hornets nest with orange hair.

But running for president they are, every one of them, and the way they’re doing it is killing their fellow Americans, hundreds of them every day.  To a person, they are following the Republican playbook written by Donald Trump in his last year in office.  They’re treating the COVID Delta variant like it’s a minor nuisance and a personal insult, not the vicious killer it is.  They’re out there spreading disinformation about phony cures like horse de-wormers, they’re either passing bans on mask and vaccine mandates or supporting the passage of such laws and executive orders, and they’re refusing to go out on the political limb of treating the disease like the existential threat it is to the nation’s populace, not to mention to their own political party. 

All so they won’t make themselves a target of that big scary leader of their party, Donald Trump.

Take Ron DeSantis, for example.  Having already passed a ban on school boards requiring children to wear masks in school, DeSantis yesterday threatened to fine counties and municipalities in the state of Florida “millions and millions of dollars” for requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID.  The city of Gainesville and two Florida counties have announced mandates requiring employees to be vaccinated or be fired.

“We are not going to let people get fired because of the vaccine mandate,” DeSantis told a press conference on Monday. “You don’t just cast aside people who have been serving faithfully over this issue, over what’s basically a personal choice over their individual health.”

Here is what DeSantis’ “personal choice over their individual health” is costing his state.  3.5 million of Florida’s citizens, 16 percent of the state’s total population, have contracted COVID.  49,250 of them have died.  On September 9 alone, 1,296 people died.  The next day, 499 people died.  Yesterday, 479 died.  Florida emergency rooms and ICU’s are at 90 percent of capacity.  The number of deaths among children under the age of 16 has doubled in a single month.  During the same month, 16 employees of the Miami-Dade school district died from COVID, including teachers, bus drivers, and a cafeteria worker. 

Last week, DeSantis prevailed in his appeal of a decision against his ban on school mask mandates. 

You see how complicated this has gotten?  What does that sentence even mean?  Well, it means DeSantis passed a ban on school districts ordering children to wear masks in school to protect them from COVID.  Parents of school children had brought the suit against DeSantis.  One court found for the parents and lifted the ban.  Now an appeals court has upheld the DeSantis ban on schools mandating that children protect themselves and others from contracting COVID by wearing masks.  Stories in Florida papers and on television news reported that DeSantis “won” his appeal, as if allowing children and school employees to spread a deadly disease amongst themselves is a “win.”

On Friday, the state of Texas sued six school districts that have required children to wear masks in defiance of an order banning mask mandates by Governor Gregg Abbott.  Yesterday, Texas sued nine more school districts over their mandates.  On September 3, it was reported that 27,000 school children in the state of Texas had tested positive for COVID during the previous week.  In one week.  27,000 children.  During the same week, 350 children were hospitalized with COVID.  Texas hospitals are reporting ICU capacity is less than 10 percent, meaning that over 90 percent of intensive care beds in the state are filled with COVID patients.

If you are hospitalized with COVID your chances of dying go up.  If you have to be treated in an ICU, your chances of dying are even higher.  Texas and Florida hospitals and ICU’s are almost filled with patients.  Hundreds of people are dying every day in both states.

DeSantis wants to be president.  Abbott wants to be president.  Both governors are opposing mask and vaccine mandates.  So is every other Republican thinking of running for president.  All of them are afraid that Donald Trump will get mad at them and say something nasty that will cost them support among the Republican base.

We used to talk about the campaigns of Republicans running for president in terms of polls and money.  Now we count their dead bodies.  That’s what the permanent campaign is costing us.  Good job, Republicans.