Republicans believe the 2022 midterm election will be a boon for their party, giving them control of the House of Representatives and possibly allowing them to also gain seats in the Senate.

But with each day that millions of Americans refuse to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and many in the GOP cheer them on, Republicans could be looking at a wipeout when the votes are counted, according to a fascinating report from David Atkins of Washington Monthly.

Atkins notes that the Republican strategy since President Joe Biden took office and rolled out nationwide vaccinations has been to sabotage the administration’s goal of reaching herd immunity, which the GOP believes will benefit them:

“Either pandemic-exhausted voters will rebel at the prospect of a new round of controls and mask mandates, or the virus will overload ICUs and kill a million Americans by the midterms–which Republicans will then blame on Biden and Democrats (as Trump just did yesterday.)

On Saturday evening we saw the perfect example of the GOP plan in the person of Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who declared:

“And now you want to mask us because you clearly failed in your effort to get us vaccinated…”

Jeanine: And now you want to mask us because you clearly failed in your effort to get us vaccinated… pic.twitter.com/PnUpn7dFlr

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 1, 2021

That sort of rhetoric, Atkins predicts, will be a loser for the GOP:

“But there is reason to believe this strategy may be not only sociopathic but also too clever by half. Most Americans have now been vaccinated, and it is abundantly clear that the Delta variant is primarily a plague of the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated least capable of persuasion are primarily base Republicans, and partisanship is one of the single strongest predictors of vaccination status.

“And vaccinated Americans are getting fed up with being put at risk and potentially forced into further restrictive measures by the politically hostile and belligerently unvaccinated. Republicans (and their useful tools like Green Greenwald) have been caterwauling about the prospect of vaccine mandates and passports, soullessly comparing them the Nazi Holocaust. Many red states have pre-emptively banned any public or private measures to implement restrictions based on vaccination status.”

Additionally, the idea of a national vaccine mandate and vaccine passports are very popular and poll extremely well, which is bad news for Republicans, who love to scream about “freedom!” whenever such matters are raised:

“Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they’d support federal, state or local governments requiring everyone to get a coronavirus vaccine, according to a new survey conducted by The COVID States Project.”

  • 70% said they’d support vaccine requirements to get on an airplane; 61% support requiring children to be vaccinated to go to school; and 66% support requiring college students to be vaccinated to attend a university.
  • A majority of every demographic subgroup except Republicans said they’d support vaccine requirements. Only 45% of Republicans said they approve of such mandates.
  • A majority of respondents in all but three states — Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota — said they support requirements that everyone be vaccinated.

All of those numbers point against the GOP and toward Democrats, who may wind up winning in both 2020 and 2022 by being the responsible adults while Republicans choose to act like spoiled adolescents.

Featured Image Via NBC News