The Bloviating Orange Gasbag’s behavior during a recent interview with right-wing propagandist Candace Owens has many Americans scratching their heads. During the interview, The Former Guy boasted that the Covid19 vaccines developed by American pharmaceutical companies were huge achievements, and urged his supporters to get vaccinated. This represents a huge shift for Depends-clad Donald from the Covid and vaccine skepticism that has characterized other GOP leaders like Ronnie the porky dwarf DeSantis, who has repeatedly abused the authority of his office to try to make it more difficult for responsible Floridians to protect themselves from the epidemic of Covid that continues to spread among MAGA extremists in Florida.

The danger for GOP candidates is very real. So far over 800,000 Americans have died of  Covid19. Although there hasn’t been an official breakdown yet by party, it is known that unvaccinated adults are more than three times as likely to lean Republican rather than Democrat. States such as Florida and Texas both experienced substantial jumps in Covid19 infection rates in August of 2021, after Covid19 vaccines had already become available. A study of Coronavirus infections in Texas found that 99.5% of Covid deaths were among people who were unvaccinated.

Simple logic tells us that if 99.5% of Covid deaths are among the unvaccinated, and Republicans are three times more likely to be unvaccinated, then Republicans are losing far more voters to Covid than Democrats are. Even more troubling for the GOP are friends and family members of the deceased who may harbor a resentment against the Republican Party for promoting anti-vax and anti-mask propaganda that prompted their friend or family  member to make poor health-care choices.

Generic Congressional Ballot surveys currently show the GOP slightly ahead on average, however a recent poll from Yougov showed Democrats up by 2% points on that measure, and if the Former Guy’s vaccine promotion was the result of him seeing some internal GOP polling that hasn’t yet been released to the public, then Republicans could be on the cusp of a very tricky turnaround in their public rhetoric.