San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Abbott erratic on telling Texans to self-govern
There’s an argument to be made on behalf of Greg Abbott’s decision to eliminate the state’s mask mandate and social-distancing restrictions.
I’m not talking about the “COVID-19 is a hoax dreamed up in the offices of the Democratic National Committee to destroy the nation’s economy and bring down the presidency of Donald Trump” argument. That one seems a little lacking in solid evidence.
I mean the personal responsibility argument. This argument acknowledges the grim reality of a pandemic that has infected 29 million Americans and taken more than 500,000 lives in the span of a year.
It accepts the presumption that we should take precautions to slow COVID-19’s spread, but contends that individuals should be trusted to selfgovern; to make safe, wise decisions without powermad politicians trying to dictate the details of our personal behavior.
Abbott suggested as much on Tuesday.
“People and businesses don’t need the state telling them how to operate,” the governor said.
If Abbott believes that to be true, why did he impose a statewide mask mandate last July? Weren’t we wise enough to selfgovern these past eight months?
Why did he shut down non-essential services (including in-person restaurant dining) last March and then regulate their occupancy levels for most of the past year?
For that matter, why did he say, last June, that he regretted letting bars reopen a month earlier?
After all, if you trust the wisdom of the people, you believe they can make the correct choices and keep themselves safe, right?
Abbott imposed those restrictions because he saw infection numbers spiking. He realized that when people started going back to bars, they didn’t necessarily adhere to the strictest social-distancing measures.
He put those mandates in place for the same reason that our state imposes strict driving laws on us: Because self-governing is a concept meant for situations where the only life at risk is your own.
When you get behind the wheel of a car, just as when you walk into a store without a mask during the worst pandemic of the past century, you’re playing around with other people’s lives. Personal liberty has to make some sacrifices to public health.
That’s why Abbott signed into law a 2017 bill banning texting while driving.
What Abbott either doesn’t understand or chooses to ignore is that a statewide mask mandate actually benefited businesses. It gave them the cover of state law to force customers to do the safe thing during this pandemic.
No business owner wants an employee caught between angry customers on opposite ends of the mask-wearing divide.
That’s why business reaction has been so muted to Abbott’s open-upthe-state order.
Monica Richards, the co-owner of Picos restaurant in Houston, told the Houston Chronicle she received “horrific” messages of abuse after announcing that her business would continue to require masks.
Abbott, with his latest order, didn’t unshackle businesses as much as he put the onus on them — and removed it from himself.
Remember, Abbott took a lot of heat over the past year from his conservative base over his various COVID restrictions.
Last October, Allen
West, the Texas Republican Party chairman, led a protest rally in front of the Governor’s Mansion. West read a resolution telling Abbott, “No exceptions, no delays … open Texas now.”
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller appeared at the rally and said, “Quite frankly, governor, your cure is worse than the disease.”
Shelley Luther, the Dallas salon owner who defied Abbott’s early executive orders by keeping her business open, so rattled Abbott that he took her side when a districtcourt judge tried to enforce the governor’s order.
Even with that bit of shameless gubernatorial pandering, Luther ran for the state Senate as an anti-Abbott Republican, calling him a “tyrant governor.”
Abbott relishes sparring with Democrats, but all the invective from his fellow Republicans clearly wore him down.
That’s why he jumped the gun last spring with a phased reopening of the state, despite the fact that Texas had failed to meet the governor’s own benchmarks when it came to COVID infection rates.
Now, he’s doing it again. He wants us to believe that we’ve come so close to the finish line that the restrictions he deemed necessary for nearly a year are no longer useful.
Keep in mind, however, that he announced his state reopening at a moment when only 7 percent of Texans had received both doses of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
Over the seven days leading up to his March 2 announcement, Texas averaged 7,259 new COVID cases per day. By comparison, over the seven days leading up to last July’s executive order mandating masks, the state averaged 6,497 cases a day.
Abbott simply grew fatigued with the political stress of the pandemic. So he extricated himself from the whole situation. He’s good at that.