“Serious political responsibility”: Conservatives identify major political error by Trump

Conservative Ramesh Ponnuru believes former President Donald Trump recently made a policy mistake that received little attention, but that he believes could harm him.

Writing in the Washington Post, Ponnuru attacks Trump’s recent statement that he would cut funds to schools that mandated student vaccinations.

First, he writes, mandatory vaccines have been around for decades now and have been extremely beneficial to children’s public health.

“Changes (in compulsory vaccinations) would be crazy,” says Ponnuru. “We can debate how many and which vaccines should be required, or the appropriate extent of religious exemptions. But the fundamental argument for mandating vaccination is obvious: it is to stop contagions. “

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In fact, he continues, as early as 1905, the United States Supreme Court saw the logic behind requiring smallpox vaccination, as it held at the time that “on the basis of the principle of self-defense, paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an outbreak of disease that threatens the safety of its members. »

Ponnuru notes that Trump has gone back and forth on the wisdom of vaccines during his presidency, and he at one point seemed particularly proud of the role his administration’s Operation Warp Speed ​​​​played in the development vaccines against COVID-19.

However, he doesn’t think that should stop Democrats from using Trump’s latest anti-vaccine ramblings against him as a cudgel.

“Democrats have no obligation to downplay the threat posed by Trump’s stated policies,” he concludes. “They would have the right to say this is what he wants to do and blame him for it. If they decide to do that, they will have several lines of attack.”