January 11, 2022 09:12 AM UTC

Colorado GOP Goes Cuckoo Over "Vaccine Passports"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Here’s an email blast that went out last night from the Colorado Republican Party, sufficiently alarmist that we’re reprinting it for you in its entirety:

So first of all, we’re aware that most of our audience will read this claim that Gov. Jared Polis is “thinking about” imposing a “vaccine passport” beyond the decisions private businesses are already making to require vaccinations and say “that’s great.” But this is of course not aimed at our average reader, but rather to help the Colorado Republican Party build a list of fact-resistant anti-vaxxer paranoiacs for message targeting purposes.

Back in reality, it would be cool if the vaccinee verification technology Colorado already uses in the myColorado app would work in other states, since that would allow vaccinated Coloradans to visit those states and go places. Again, we’re talking about private businesses who are making the decision on their own initiative to require proof of vaccination. As for the assertion that “vax passports have failed already?”

What are they talking about? The “vaccine passport” most of us used to attend school?

Although it’s taken on a new misguided urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic, the partisan politicization of vaccines–in particular the embrace of anti-vaxxers by the Republican Party–is a phenomenon we’ve witnessed in Colorado since well before COVID. Back in 2015, a push from hard-right GOP Senators Tim Neville and Laura Woods to pass anti-vaccine legislation in the middle of a historic outbreak of measles ended in failure and eventual electoral ouster for both.

In 2022, the partisan divide over vaccines is no longer a theory. It is a bright clear line.