Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called out Republicans who are forging ahead with a convention in COVID-19-ravaged Florida in August, saying more than a few GOP lawmakers are taking a pass on attending due to personal health concerns, -- but are staying silent about canceling it.
According to the conservative Never-Trumper, the decision to put delegates and other attendees' lives at risk is both "selfish" and grotesque."
After Donald Trump complained about restrictions that were being placed on the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was then moved to Jacksonville in Florida which is now seeing an explosion in COVID-19 infections far beyond what North Carolina faced.
Nonetheless, RNC officials are saying holding the nationally televised convention is worth the risk to promote the president who is tumbling in the polls and needs all the help he can get.
According to Virginia's Morton Blackwell, 80, an RNC member, "You take risks every day. You drive down the street and a cement truck could crash into you. You can’t not do what you have to do because of some possibility of a bad result.”
As Rubin points out, responsibility for delegates who feel the need to risk their lives falls on the shoulders of Trump who demands a show of adulation and is ignoring health officials' advice.
"This is all of a piece with the narcissist in chief," she wrote. "Trump is willing to undermine lifesaving advice and guidelines so as to confuse the public and shield himself from accountability."
Rubin also cited Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) who are skipping the convention to protect themselves without taking a forceful stand against having it.
"As for their health and safety, however, a growing list of elected Republicans are not showing up. Risks are for the little people, the people who have no choice but to show up for work or encounter super-spreaders in their communities," Rubin accused.
"This is the natural consequence of a cult of personality in which the leader’s ego and survival are paramount. Trump wants to slow testing (which alerts those infected and those they have encountered so they can be traced and quarantined) because it makes the numbers — 'his' numbers — look bad. No president has behaved in such monstrously self-absorbed ways, willing to wave away the lives of Americans so he can appear more successful," she wrote. "Elected Republicans also have jettisoned concern for the health and well-being of others. What matters is to keep Trump — no matter how crazy and irresponsible — mollified. And if others are harmed?"
"Republicans are more than willing to consign those unlucky souls to the risks of illness and death," she continued before bluntly concluding, "Life is risky — for other people."
You can read the whole piece here.