First Dose

The First Dose

 

My wife and I received our first dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine last Saturday at the Froedert West Bend Health Center and saw several friends in our age group there to get their shots as well. Other than a slight soreness in the arms where we got the shots, neither of us had any side effects. We will get our second dose at the end of February and, hopefully, be able to visit our family by mid-March. We feel like we can see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. It has been a hard year in lock down and terrible not feeling safe out.

 

Our fear of catching the virus is due in no small part to our Legislature which has done little to nothing to slow the virus spread. Safely gerrymandered GOP legislative leaders resist common sense measures favored by a majority of their constituents and recommended by the Centers of Disease Control including mask mandates and social distance requirements. They object to Governor Evers’ public health emergency declarations implementing these popular measures, not because they are wrong or not based upon sound science, but because they imposed upon unfounded notions of personal liberty from governmental over-reach.

 

GOP objections to public health measures led our legislature to do nothing at all to combat the disease that has killed over 5,500 of our citizens and infected more than 500,000. 

 

This head in the sand response to the greatest public health crisis in decades shows just how far the failed “smaller government, less taxes” approach to government has devolved. It puts in stark relief just how irrelevant the modern Republican Party has become.

 

Coupled with the failure of the Trump presidency and the refusal to confront white supremacy and conspiracy theories now holding sway throughout their ranks, it is not surprising that the GOP is in full meltdown mode. 

 

Moderate republicans don’t have the ability or the moral fortitude to wrest control of the party back from the precipice. They stand idly by as GOP minorities in both houses of Congress are powerless to stop implementation of the Biden-Harris legislative agenda. 

 

Passage of President Biden’s COVID relief bill by budget reconciliation to avoid a Senate filibuster is all but assured. Biden has already undone a lot of the damage done under the previous administration by executive order and that too will continue without serious challenge. 

 

A majority of the American people want a government that cares about them more than it cares about the privileged few and the hallmarks of our racist past. President Biden is bypassing the GOP in Congress and seeking unity with the American people directly by putting forward policies and actions that the majority supports. 

 

GOP leaders in Congress struggle to find a way out. They failed to meaningfully censure Rep. Marjory Taylor Green, the former QAnon supporter from Georgia, to prove they can police their own. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent trip to see the previous president shows he believes that impeached twice president still commands respect and leads the party. They cannot continue to fail to disavow QAnon, white supremacy, insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists and maintain any claim to legitimacy.

 

Until both state and national republican leaders find a way to advance conservative values and policies without failing to separate themselves from white supremacy and conspiracy theories to secure an electoral majority, the GOP will remain no more than a marginal influence on American political life. 

 

Unfortunately, until Wisconsin has redrawn legislative district maps to make elections competitive again, we will remain in the backwater of a Covid plagued state which clings to a long-lost vision of an America repudiated by those who care about their neighbors. We will remain hamstrung by do-nothing legislators who bask in strained claims of personal liberty. 

 

Wisconsin has a long progressive history and there are still a lot of progressives here willing to work to bring back those policies that made us the envy of the nation. We just need to get vaccinated first.