Governor’s rank demagoguery, deflections put all Texans at risk
Rank demagoguery from Gov. Greg Abbott?
Sad to say, it’s become quite a habit.
Give the governor some credit: Unlike many high-profile Republicans, he didn’t spend the week grandstanding about Dr. Seuss.
But that’s about the best that can be said about his performance during last month’s winter freeze and ensuing blackout, which left dozens dead and millions of Texans without power or water for days. The breakdown of the power grid in the nation’s second most populous state is surely something Abbott would prefer others forgot about.
The governor on Tuesday announced that he would lift the statewide mask mandate he issued in July, as well as “opening Texas 100 percent.” This made Texas the largest state to reopen to date, and one of the few to do so completely, so far.
Some on the right — who for months have been chafing against mask requirements and the oppression they supposedly represent — were pleased by this news. But on balance, Abbott’s announcement didn’t go over as well as he might have expected, for the simple reason that — according to our exhausted public health experts — it’s simply too soon to stop wearing masks indoors and in public areas.
Luckily for the nation at large, most leaders can see that.
“Texas — I think it’s a big mistake,” said President Joe Biden, wearing a mask as he spoke from the Oval Office on Friday. “I hope everybody’s realized by now these masks make a difference.”
“We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we are able to get vaccines into people's arms,” continued Biden, who has a 70 percent approval rating for his handling of the pandemic, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
“The last thing — the last thing — we need is Neanderthal thinking in the meantime.”
These comments gave Abbott occasion to take issue with Biden, a Democrat, and he seized the opportunity in a local TV news interview Wednesday evening.
“President Biden’s administration itself is exposing Texans and Americans to COVID-19 through illegal immigrants that they are allowing to come into the state of Texas who are positive for COVID-19 and being released into Texas communities,” said Abbott, using his angry voice.
“What President Biden is doing in Texas today is recklessly endangering the lives of Texans as we are trying to provide them vaccines,” he continued. “He must stop this practice now, exposing more Texans to COVID-19. It is completely unacceptable.”
KPRC news anchor Kris Gutierrez began stating the obvious: “I completely understand that you two have different opinions when it comes to immigration, specifically in our state …”
Abbott began shaking his head.
“This — wait wait, hold on, wait, wait, Kris — no, I’m sorry, Kris, you missed, you missed the point. You missed the point,” said the visibly agitated governor. “This does not involve illegal immigration. He’s bringing in people with COVID-19 and releasing them into our communities!”
If that’s the case, surely, we would probably all benefit from the measure of protection conferred by a statewide mask mandate.
But — and perhaps this goes without saying — it is not the case.
Biden is not “bringing” people with an infectious disease into the United States. Abbott is apparently referring to reports that 108 asylum seekers at the southern border, in Brownsville, tested positive for COVID-19, which is unfortunate, but to be expected: after all, it’s a pandemic.
To ignore those facts and opt for simple demagoguery may help Abbott with his political base. It’s nevertheless not befitting for the governor of Texas to peddle nativist tropes about immigrants in an effort to deflect public attention from his own reckless decision-making.
All in all, one gets the impression that Abbott is not used to the kind of scrutiny he’s been under in recent weeks.
“Gov. Abbott led a fairly charmed political life moving up in the ranks and in his first several years in the top spot,” observed Keir Murray, a Democratic consultant based in Houston. “That ended with the COVID crisis a year ago.”
“Unfortunately, challenging times have revealed a leader making decisions based on political expediency, rather than the public interest,” Murray added.
It would be nice if Abbott took his cues from peers in other states who are focused on public safety rather than politics as we head into the next, crucial months of the pandemic.
“My job is to be the governor of the state of Ohio,” said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, explaining why he didn’t feel it was time to lift his state’s mask mandate yet. “And I'm going to focus on Ohio and we're to follow the science.”
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, also a Republican, took a similar stance. “I don’t know really what the big rush to get rid of the mask is, because these masks have saved a lot — a lot of lives,” said Justice. “We’re going to do the smart thing in West Virginia. We’re not going to do the thing that’s politically correct.”
“It becomes almost a macho thing,” he added.
West Virginia, incidentally, has emerged as a national leader in the COVID vaccine rollout. Texas has not.
It would be nice if Abbott had kept his eye on the ball to minimize the prospects for another uptick in infections, hospitalizations and deaths this spring. Instead, he jumped the gun and did exactly what experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci were warning against. Perhaps Abbott failed to note that the state is not, in fact, out of the woods when it comes to this virus. On Friday Texas had 6410 new cases of COVID-19, and 256 newly reported deaths, according to the Chronicle’s tally. More than 44,000 people in Texas have died of COVID-19.
“What we don't need right now is another surge,” Fauci told CNN on Wednesday. “So just pulling back on all of the public health guidelines that we know work — and if you take a look at the curve, we know it works. It just is inexplicable. Why would you want to pull back?”
We’ll have to live with the mystery. As it stands, all we know about Abbott’s decision is that it puts the onus on the rest of us to keep each other safe.
“Wear a mask. Avoid gatherings. Every Texan must now collectively say: The buck stops here,” tweeted Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo Wednesday.
It doesn’t stop with our governor, that’s for sure.