It must be frustrating for some of the old RINOs to watch the new administration flounder and struggle and see the Party suffer. New blood is sometimes needed for an older system but sometimes there is a lot of wasted blood in the process as the newcomers are ignorant and even arrogant, not understanding the rules and legalities, not respecting the traditions of the Party. Tearing down fences without asking why a fence was put up in the first place.
This last week's PR nightmare for the Bennett administration has gone nationwide, even international. Part of it is deserved; you don't compare minor distractions to the Holocaust. You just don't disrespect what the Jews went through especially when what you are calling for is to restrict private property rights and force new “rights” protection upon employers without regard for the consequences. The GOP ought to be about minimizing the role of government in our lives and businesses, not enlarging it.
The idea that businesses would be forced to employ un vaccinated employees is no different if you are discussing a covid vaccine or a tetanus shot. If your employees are working around natural sources of tetanus and the employer is paying for the medical costs they might ask you to get a tetanus shot. Same if you are needing to wear a respirator, gotta spend the money to get certified to wear the respirator. Same for driving a forklift, the risk is high enough that both the state and the employer see the value in certifying fork lift drivers to keep down accident rates and the expense of accidents.
To do otherwise is asking the employer to bear the costs of lawsuits if a waiter at a restaurant or hospital comes down with hepatitis or covid and spreads the disease. That business is forced to pay for the “rights” of the employee not to get a tetanus shot or a covid vaccine. In the Republican Party we believe in the free market. If an employer wants to market their restaurant as all employees and customers vaccinated then there is a segment of the population that will find that useful and they will do business with the company. Some might rather support another restaurant that doesn't require customers or employees to be vaccinated.
Much has been made of the hospitals. Well they are expected to deal with the covid patients and not take the disease home to their families. Some claim that half of the doctors and nurses refuse to take the vaccine. Fine, let them find another job but how long do you think the hospitals will stay open if half of their workers quit? In short order they will be working at a hospital that doesn't think the covid vaccine is working and doesn't care if they are vaccinated or not. The customers will likewise go there or not go there according to their personal risk assessments.
Another analogy is a cabinet shop working people with weed cards for “medical” reasons. No government is going to force me to employ a person that is taking medicine or drugs that impair their safety and expect me to carry a higher insurance rate or even see the insurance not cover a work place accident because the person was high on weed. The only ones that would want that are the single issue activists and the weed smokers and those that sell weed for a living.
Oklahoma Chairman John Bennett has surrounded himself with so many single issue groups. The abolitionists that don't want a woman to have the right of self defense, the religious crazies that want their rights to a belief to be protected by the heavy hand of government but they also want that same government to force you to follow their religion, the anti vaccine folks that might have a case on the dozens of childhood vaccine doses but are way off on this pandemic vaccine that President Trump worked so hard to get produced, and the unusually selective Second Amendment group that is fine with gun control as long as they get to say what passes and what fails.
There appear to be few adults left in the GOP itself. An ill advised idea to close off state committee meetings and throttle the release of financial info was bad enough. Then an idiot writes a post comparing the Holocaust where six million Jews were wiped out is comparable to an employer exercising their rights to limit risk and disruption of their business by requiring a vaccination. This weekend the liberal media spread this head scratching stupidity across the nation and even international, making all Oklahoma Republicans look stupid and backward.
And administration needs balanced and level headed advisors and staff. John Bennett hasn't proven himself capable of attracting or retaining those kind of people and instead seems to have gathered a leadership team that focuses on excluding others from decisions and information and cranking out crack pot theories.
