GOP Senators panic as Donald Trump destroys their 2020 prospects
Donald Trump is either pretending that the coronavirus is a hoax and his rallies are perfectly safe to attend (something that should reveal what he really thinks of his supporters), or that the coronavirus isn’t a serious emergency that he had to put his vice president in charge of. But there are at least a few Republicans who think his appalling management of a pandemic is a terrible and dangerous idea, at least in the face of their own odds of being re-elected.
While Republicans like Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Martha McSally of Arizona were once adamant about repealing Obamacare, which would cut $1 billion from funding specifically set aside for public health and responding to outbreaks, now they’re saying the Center for Disease Control isn’t funded well enough. McSally is even asking for reimbursement for cities from the CDC. They want to be able to say when election season comes that they were able to help while the crisis broke out – regardless of whatever dangerous and stupid antics Donald Trump was up to at the time.
The problem is that even if the coronavirus ends up being not as serious as people fear – and what we’re not prepared for – then this could still reflect poorly on Donald Trump – as it should. As managing the coronavirus pandemic becomes a bipartisan issue, the more difficult it will be for Donald Trump to keep his border wall promise. As for the Republicans that have decided the CDC is something that shouldn’t be gutted, their Democratic opponents are now able to use their support of gutting the CDC in the first place in their campaign literature.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making