With lives at risk, Kansas Republican Senate candidates are still pro-choice on masks
The Kansas Republicans running for the U.S. Senate who debated in Wichita Wednesday night did not really disagree on anything other than which one of them is the only one who can win.
Despite polling that suggests that Republicans, too, have increasingly mixed feelings about President Donald Trump, especially over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and protests over police brutality, they mostly argued about which was most supportive of the president.
I am, said former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. No, I am, said U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall. Ha, it is I, said retired Kansas City Chiefs player Dave Lindstrom.
The debate, which was supposed to be about health care, also showed that there’s no real difference among the candidates on how we should respond to COVID-19. As free range Americans, we should all do exactly as we please, each one said.
Kobach said that even if we get a COVID-19 vaccine, it should not be mandatory.
In terms of the economic fallout from the pandemic, the thing he mentioned first was the importance of limiting temporary work visas for immigrants, to give Americans priority for the jobs that any landscaping, meatpacking or agricultural employer will tell you they don’t want and won’t take.
The candidates also agreed that the coronavirus, which has already claimed more than 121,000 lives in our country, is just not that big a deal.
Though cases are up in Kansas, Marshall, who is an ob-gyn, said, “I’m excited where Kansas is right now.” He called one current outbreak a “little hiccup” and said, “Each community needs to solve this one community at a time.” Thanks, Doc.
Kobach said all aid to Americans who are suffering as a result of this pandemic is a waste that can’t be tolerated: “The federal government’s response should not be to shovel more money at the problem. We have to have someone in Washington who will go back to the previous normal, not the new normal, and then cutting federal spending from there.”
But the lowlight of the night was their shared foolishness on masks.
No one is ever going to be arrested for not wearing one, even though they are life-saving, simple and should not be a political statement at all.
“We are a free country,” said Lindstrom, who did pull a mask from his pocket. “People ought to have the right to wear a mask if they want to. If they don’t want to wear a mask, they shouldn’t have to wear a mask.”
The problem with this view is that masks protect other people from asymptomatic carriers.
This is absolutely like saying that if you might have AIDS, it’s your right as an American to wear a condom or not wear a condom.
“There’s places to do it,” like nursing homes, Marshall said. “If you’re around sick people, people getting treatment,” you should wear one, “but certainly we do have a crisis of our civil liberties.”
Dr. Marshall, since those with compromised immune systems don’t walk around with signs announcing this fact, this makes absolutely no sense.
Kobach said that “if I were to travel on a plane, sure, I’d put a mask on. If I had some reason to go on a New York subway, yeah I’d put a mask on at that point. But no, I believe that we should have the freedom to make the choice.”
Since all of the Republican candidates consider themselves strongly pro-life, let’s put what he just said in the context of the abortion debate. Kobach, Marshall and others argue that it’s not a woman’s right to get an abortion because she’s not choosing only for herself; there is another life at stake.
Well, that’s the case also with wearing a mask. When you don’t, you’re not only making that decision for yourself, but are putting other lives at risk. Why is it your God-given right to do that?
Kobach says what the debate over masks shows is that “the core of the Democrat soul is controlling you, controlling this country.” Funny, pro-choice Democrats feel that’s the main motivation of those who oppose abortion rights.