Republicans are shameless and have absolutely no compunction about being inconsistent. Hypocrisy is a useless concept in those circumstances:
At least five Republican-led states have extended unemployment benefits to people who’ve lost jobs over vaccine mandates — and a smattering of others may soon follow.
Workers who quit or are fired for cause — including for defying company policy — are generally ineligible for jobless benefits. But Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have carved out exceptions for those who won’t submit to the multi-shot coronavirus vaccine regimens that many companies now require. Similar ideas have been floated in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Missouri.
Critics contend that these states are incentivizing people to skip shots that public health experts say offer the best line of defense against the coronavirus. Business leaders and industry groups have argued against the rule changes because, they say, companies would shoulder much of the costs. And the efforts are playing out as the Biden administration is pressing immunization rules for private companies and as coronavirus cases are surging again because of the fast-spreading omicron variant.
Observers say it’s a mark of the politicization of the coronavirus — with fights flaring over business closures, mask mandates and more — and how it has scrambled state politics and altered long-held positions. It wasn’t long ago, they note, that two dozen Republican-led states moved to restrict unemployment aid to compel residents to return to the workforce and ease labor shortages.
“These governors, who are using the unemployment insurance system in a moment of political theater to make a statement about the vaccine mandate, are the same folks who turned off unemployment benefits early for millions of workers over the summer,” said Rebecca Dixon, the executive director of the left-leaning National Employment Law Project. Arkansas, Iowa, Tennessee and Florida cut federal unemployment aid in June.
But backers insist that Americans should be able to decide for themselves whether to get vaccinated. Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson (R) has broadly criticized vaccine mandates as ineffective and unfair, at one point tweeting: “Kansans have made it clear that they choose freedom over Faucism” — a play on the name of the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, whose masking and vaccination guidance during the pandemic has made him a target for the right.
These GOP governors had a fit over the unemployment benefits being extended during the pandemic because they said it encouraged dependence and harmed businesses. Now this. But if you were to confront them with this hypocrisy, they would just say, “it’s completely different, I know you re but what am I” and move on. If you showed them the facts, they just say, “it’s my opinion” or “I’ve done my own research.” There is no way to persuade people like this with logic because they don’t acknowledge that it exists.
If anyone has good ideas about how to deal with people who are completely unmoored from any kind of morals or principles, I’d be interested to know what they are.