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 It is a surprising start to the interview given that, about an
hour earlier, the congressman tweeted a black-and-white image of a syringe.
Federal health officials continue to have a hard time getting all Americans
vaccinated against the coronavirus, and Biden had promised to send people
“door-to-door" to get doses to the vulnerable. For Roy, that is when the
president went too far. Hence, the cartoon syringe, a play on the famous “Come
and Take It” flag, this time with an updated caption – “Come Inject It.”
Merchandise branded with that slogan will be available soon on his campaign
website, but as the second-term Texas Republican explains while driving along
Interstate 10 somewhere in south Texas, he knows the importance of inoculation.
He saw what can happen without them.
“I grew up and I watched him live a life ravaged by that disease,” Roy says of
his father. “I'm very pro-vaccine.”
The congressman calls the vaccine that banished polio “a great blessing.” He is
“delighted” that children no longer have to worry about that debilitating
disease. “Likewise,” Roy adds, “I’m delighted there are millions of people who
are able to avail themselves of a [coronavirus] vaccine that they believe, in
their calculation, is good for them and their well-being. That is great.”
He’s ticked off all the same. “I’m just sick and God-darn tired of the left, and
this government, dictating to me, frankly, anything at all,” he says. “Back the
F off. That's my message to the White House.”
Roy predicted that “the left is going to lose their ever-loving collective mind”
over his criticizing the White House. “They are going to call me an anti-vaxxer.”
He says they are wrong, that it is intellectually consistent to support a
vaccine but also oppose a federal campaign to convince the public to take it
because, “What I really am is a believer in freedom.”
“Who are you targeting and how do you know? Are you going to go ‘door-to-door'
to all 330 million Americans, or are you going to go through some lists you have
about who is or is not vaccinated?” he said.
Asked for a response to the congressman, a White House official texted back:
“lol no.” Roy’s sentiments are still indicative of the kind of vaccine hesitancy
among conservatives that the White House is trying to tackle. A new Washington
Post-ABC News poll showed that while 93% of Democrats report that they have
either gotten the shot or plan to, just 49% of Republicans say the same. This
comes as vaccination rates are leveling off nationally and an easily spread new
variant of the virus originally from India has taken hold in the United States.
Federal officials are now switching their focus from mass vaccination sites to
localized vaccination efforts. This means setting up clinics at workplaces,
urging employers to give employees paid time leave to visit their doctor, and,
yes, going door-to-door.
“Now we need to go to community by community,” the president said Tuesday,
“neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes door to door – literally knocking
on doors – to get help to the remaining people, protected from the virus.”
Biden has stuck with the persuasion route, and his administration, after
considering but ultimately abandoning the idea of vaccine passports, has shied
away from anything close to a vaccine mandate. He declined to require
active-duty members of the military get the shot, and the White House issued
guidance to federal agencies directing them not to require their employees be
immunized. Asked about public schools and private companies requiring
vaccination, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters, “We are going
to leave it up to them to make these decisions.”
Some public health experts want the president to be more aggressive, as the New
York Times reports, and encourage states and employers to require vaccinations.
“I’m trying to restrain myself, but I’ve kind of had it,” former Health and
Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the Times. “You know, we’re
going to tiptoe around mandates. It’s like, come on. I’m kind of over that. I
want to make sure that people I deal with don’t have it so I don’t transmit it
to my granddaughter.”
A brow-beating former Obama administration official isn’t going to win over
recalcitrant Republicans. Someone like Tom Frieden, the former director of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just might though.
That was one finding from a focus group hosted by longtime Republican pollster
Frank Luntz. Over a Zoom call, Luntz introduced Frieden to self-identifying
Trump voters wary of the vaccine – deliberately omitting the part about him
heading the CDC during Obama’s administration. Frieden then rattled off “five
facts,” among them that the vaccine will not remain in your body and that “more
than 95% of the doctors who’ve been offered this vaccine have gotten it as soon
as they can.”
Many of the participants seemed open to Frieden, and some said he changed their
mind. The group overwhelmingly felt, as one man in the focus group explained,
that, “We want to be educated, not indoctrinated.” The Luntz takeaway?
Politicians probably won’t be able to sell the vaccine to the portion of the
public that’s already hesitant. But physicians might. Asked about the Biden
door-to-door vow, the GOP pollster told RCP, “I’m not sure if I like the
strategy, but I certainly appreciate the passion and the commitment.”
What he can’t stand is partisanship infecting public health: “It’s essential to
keep politics out of the vaccine effort,” he added. “Unfortunately, that has
proven to be impossible. It’s a tragedy that some people refuse to act
responsibly just because they want to make a political statement.”
[to top of second column] |
Pandemic politics were a feature of 2020, whether it was President Donald Trump
calling Democratic criticism of his handling of the virus “a hoax,” or Kamala
Harris on the debate stage with Mike Pence questioning the safety of a future
vaccine. Pandemic politics, unsurprisingly, continue to be a thing in 2021.
“Please get vaccinated now. It works. It’s free,” Biden said at the White House
Tuesday. “It’s never been easier, and it’s never been more important. Do it now
for yourself and the people you care about, for your neighborhood, for your
country. It sounds corny, but it’s a patriotic thing to do.”
And that is where Roy objects. He likened Biden’s red-white-and-blue routine to
“wrapping a supposed duty in the name of public health in the flag,” and
provides a rebuttal in kind: “Freedom to choose what is in your best interests
and your family's best interest – that is the most patriotic thing we can do.”
Rattling off how the CDC flip-flopped on mask wearing then relating how critics
insisted a vaccine wouldn’t be developed before the end of the year, Roy also
said Democratic obsession with vaccination is like “a religion.”
“They live-and-die by political moment and the power of government versus trying
to live as a free people respectfully to each other, taking care of each other,”
he asserted. Well, what is the correct disposition of government during a health
emergency then? “The answer is always freedom,” Roy answers. “That's the answer
for all the things. And unfortunately, our country is moving away from that and
until we return to that our country is going to be divided.”
He raises questions about possible long-term side effects of the vaccine,
especially the rare inflammation of the heart that has occurred in teens and
young men under 30 which the CDC is now investigating. But he won’t say whether
or not the shot went into his own arm. And the congressman, who even urged the
Biden administration to set up a vaccine “super site” in San Antonio, argues
that the federal government should just leave the issue alone already.
Roy isn’t the only who feels that way. Biden stepped on a veritable rake of
Republican backlash when he suggested that the federal government would go
“door-to-door" to get people vaccinated. But Roy is becoming increasingly
prominent on the right. The Associated Press recently dedicated an entire story
to a secretly recorded video of the congressman talking to his constituents on a
Southwest Airlines flight. Roy wasn’t wearing a mask, the AP reported, “an
apparent violation of federal law.” It was less than three-minutes long.
“The AP thinks they've done some great service to humanity by exposing the great
crime of the century, ‘Congressman Roy having his mask down,’” he jokes. After
the story ran, Roy tells RCP that people wrote him just to say thank you. The
report “was massively well-received in my district,” he says, estimating that it
was “probably the equivalent of a $500,000 ad for me running in my district.”
There is an appetite for the cantankerous Texan’s kind of politics, says Jessica
Anderson, an alumnus of the Trump White House and the executive director of
Heritage Action for America. “He is the best kind of legislator, because he
stands on principle and doesn’t worry about whether he will come back,” she
said. He certainly doesn’t mind controversy.
Another video, this one also secretly recorded, showed Roy telling conservative
activists that Republicans would benefit from obstructing the president’s
agenda, specifically creating “18 more months of chaos and the inability to get
stuff done.”
“Well yeah, I mean, that's our job. I totally disagree with everything Democrats
are trying to do to my country, so of course I oppose it,” he deadpanned when
asked about the online outrage his leaked comments sparked. He opposes Biden on
everything from the president’s gender identity executive order to the
administration’s proposed energy policy.
“I'm an equal opportunity basher of virtually everything that occurs in Congress
– on both sides of the aisle,” says the congressman. That is sometimes true,
even if it isn’t politically expedient. Roy was one of the rare House
Republicans who split with his own party and voted to certify the 2020 election
results. Citing his many policy differences with Biden, the conservative says,
“It's not a surprise when I say I'm sorry, I'm generally against what you
numbskulls are doing. I want to try to stop you from inflicting more damage on
my country and the people I represent.”
A former assistant attorney general for Texas, Roy sees it as his constitutional
duty as a member of the co-equal legislative branch to balance the executive:
And that civic obligation doesn’t stop during a pandemic. For him, the role of
the federal government is simple. Facilitate the rollout of doses, sure, but
don’t knock on any doors. Leave it up to the individual whether or not to get
vaccinated. Then it is a question of prudence, of weighing risks-vs-rewards. It
is the conversation he had with his own father.
“My parents said to me, ‘Well Chip, what do you think?’” Roy recalls. “I said,
‘Dad, you're 78. Mom, you’re 72. I think it is in your best interest to probably
get the vaccine, even though it's relatively untested, because the virus ain’t
great if you're 78.” |
