It has been great fun watching Republicans try to deal with the vaccination issue. The natural reaction of a Republican politician is to go with the crazy. If you are perceived as a moderate, like Chris Christie, you may literally embrace the chance to establish your insane bona fides, which is, of course, exactly what Christie did.
Now, normally, Republicans get a free pass on this sort of stuff. For instance, Republicans are allowed to question climate science, without much pushback, so they had every right to expect they could disregard medical science without any problems.
But in rare cases, it doesn't work. The disconnect between the words they emit and reality may be too great, or, and this is classically the case, they may emit ignorant noises about an issue that people viscerally understand. The firestorm they've faced (I mean poor Rand Paul had to take a needle) is similar in kind if not in degree to what took place after they decided to interfere in the Terry Schiavo case. They literally never saw that coming, though yours truly did (no link available to my old dead blog, but see here). Just as [almost]everyone can imagine themselves presented with a Schiavo situation, [almost] everyone can understand the need for vaccines. (Oh, by the way, aren't these the same folks who went into full panic mode about Ebola?) This has left the poor Republican presidential wannabes totally perplexed. They are caught in the middle between the bat-shit crazies, and an aroused rational mega-majority. What's a politician to do?
I'm not sure this would work, but they might want to borrow some irrationality from Senator Tillis. They could say that they are against requiring anyone to be vaccinated, but if you don't get vaccinated, you have to wear a sign that tells the world that you have not been vaccinated. I know it doesn't make any sense, but we are talking about Republicans here.
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