Not every Republican governor is an extremist

There are 27 Republican governors in the United States today, and the ones you hear most about are those who almost seem determined to get as many people as possible sick with COVID-19, especially Ron Desantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas. They embody the current de rigueur GOP view that the greatest danger is not from the virus but from efforts to control it. Better one should die gasping for breath than be asked to put on a mask before going in the grocery store.

But the country is not actually that divided about many public health measures. In one poll, two-thirds of Americans oppose orders like the ones Desantis and Abbott have signed restricting local school districts from imposing mask mandates on students. While vaccine mandates of various kinds are more controversial, the extreme positions taken by some GOP politicians don't seem like they'd necessarily be winners even among Republican voters.

Yet beyond Republican governors eyeing the White House there is a larger group struggling to deal with new outbreaks yet restricted by what is and isn't acceptable for politicians in their party. You can see them visibly straining to operate within what has become party dogma on public health.

Let's first take a sample of how bad things are getting as the delta variant spreads:

There is not a single available pediatric ICU bed in North Texas; the state has now asked the federal government for mortuary trailers to handle the dying. Meanwhile, Abbott, the Texas governor, has tested positive for COVID.

In Mississippi, medical centers are “on the verge of collapse” and setting up field hospitals in parking lots to handle the wave of new patients.

Oklahoma hospitals say they have been pushed to capacity by the surge, putting in doubt whether they can adequately treat people who suffer car accidents, heart attacks, or other emergencies.

How is your average Republican governor responding? Setting aside the more extreme ones, the typical response seems to be a plea for people to get vaccinated, hastily followed by assurances that there will be no mandates— mask, vaccine or any other kind of mandates. Here, for instance, is Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, making sure everyone knows he won't be restricting their freedom: “On COVID, let me be clear that we are not going to issue any mandates; no mandates will come from this office. No face masks, no vaccination mandates,” Gordon said, adding lockdowns were also off the table. “Fortunately, the issue is not masks; the issue is COVID and the disruption this virus poses to us all.”

Fortunately the issue is not masks? What Gordon seems to have been trying to say is that you can solve the problem by being vaccinated, which he does support. But don't worry, he won't force you to.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who last month blurted out that “it's time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks,” now says, “I want to be abundantly clear: There will be absolutely no statewide mandates, closures or the like.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is being a little more proactive; he too supports vaccination, and even created a state holiday the Friday before Labor Day so people could have the time to get vaccinated. He also is sending more money to the state's hospitals to help them handle the wave of patients. But he wanted to be clear on what he wasn't saying: “I want to reiterate that Georgia will remain open for business. We will not shut businesses down.”

At least we can say that governors like Kemp, Ivey and Gordon seem to care, which you can't say for all of them.

The politicization of public health has taken different forms over the course of the pandemic, but one common thread has been the presence of a vocal, angry, and sometimes even violent minority within the Republican Party who will object to any public health measure they say restricts their “freedom.” Which means Republican politicians worry that they'll incur the wrath of that group, or the scorn of the conservative media, if they act too forcefully to tamp down the pandemic.

The safer route, they seem to have concluded, is to spend as much time talking about what they won't do to stop the virus as about what they will do. Which may forestall some right-wing backlash, but it won't do much to get us past this crisis.