As they continue to do everything in their power to sabotage President Joe Biden’s effort to get the nation past the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans are blaming the president for the prolonged health crisis, and Democrats are livid.
Democrats argue that Republicans want the public to forget that they bear responsibility for public resistance to masks and vaccines, noting the opposition to those leading mitigation efforts comes overwhelmingly from the right.
“They’ve done everything possible to ensure that we can’t get past it,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said of the Republicans, according to The Hill. “They’ve fought mask requirements, vaccine requirements. They’ve spread misinformation. They have amplified dangerous conspiracy theories.
“There is one group to blame in this country for the continued spread of COVID,” she added, “and that’s those actors who have done each and every one of those things.”
As noted by The Hill, “the pandemic is a factor in Biden’s falling approval ratings and the worries Democrats have over next year’s midterm elections. Pandemic fatigue is a huge political problem for the party, which feels as if it faces a Catch-22 since the pandemic is less likely the end the more people avoid vaccinations or even booster shots.”
Now, as Biden and his health team are scrambling to contain the spread of the virus, Republicans are playing the blame game ahead of the 2022 midterms.
“I know President Biden promised America that he could handle COVID,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters Friday in the Capitol. “More people have died from COVID this year than last year.”
McCarthy’s comments come despite GOP lawmakers, conservative news outlets and right-wing activists have leading the charge against the push for universal vaccines and mask requirements — steps seen as vital, in the eyes of the country’s top public health experts, for containing the global pandemic.
