GOP vaccine defenders are bowing to RFK Jr. at a perilous time

Senate Republicans on Tuesday green-lit perhaps the nation’s foremost purveyor of vaccine misinformation to oversee U.S. health agencies.

The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines to advance President Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary to the full Senate. They did so even as some Republicans expressed reservations about handing Kennedy a huge new perch from which to continue baselessly undermining vaccines.

Those GOP vaccine defenders had valid reasons to worry. And they chose to enable a formidable opponent in a battle over vaccines even as we got increasing evidence they’re losing that battle on the right.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) noted last week that many of his constituents cited Kennedy for their decisions not to vaccinate their children. He worried aloud that Kennedy, as HHS secretary, would use his “credibility to undermine” vaccines. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) warned after the vote that it would be a “problem” for him if Kennedy “does actually take a position against the safety of proven vaccines.”

But Kennedy never publicly backed off the substance of his false and baseless claims or suggested he’d stop pushing them. About all we know was he promised to reevaluate the evidence and commit to established processes on vaccines, and said he’d consult with Cassidy moving forward.

And surrounding that vote, we’ve gotten reminders about how perilous a time the likes of Cassidy and Tillis chose to give Kennedy a hall pass.

Shortly before the committee vote, Trump chimed in on social media to spout the same type of suggestion about vaccines and autism that Cassidy had objected to from Kennedy.

“20 years ago, Autism in children was 1 in 10,000,” said Trump, who has falsely linked vaccines to autism before. “NOW IT’S 1 in 34. WOW! Something’s really wrong. We need BOBBY!!! Thank You!” (In fact, much of the apparent increase in autism diagnoses owes to increased awareness and changes in how it’s diagnosed.)

Despite Trump signaling unambiguously that vaccine skepticism will continue to very much have a place in his administration, Cassidy proceeded to vote for Kennedy just minutes later.

And then Wednesday came a pretty striking new poll that shows how ingrained this vaccine skepticism has become on the American right.

The Economist-YouGov poll showed Trump voters said by a nearly 10-point margin that it’s at least “probably true” that vaccines have been shown to cause autism.

That’s a far cry from where things stood even as recently as four years ago. Back then, the same poll showed Trump voters took the opposite view — that this link was “probably false” — by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

Other polls have also shown a sharp rise in vaccine skepticism on the right.

Gallup showed the percentage of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who said vaccines are more dangerous than the disease they are designed to prevent rising from 12 percent in 2019 to 31 percent in July.

Just 20 percent of GOP-leaning voters outright rejected a link between vaccines and autism; about 6 in 10 said they were unsure.

And recent KFF polling showed the percentage of Republican parents who say they’ve kept their children up to date on childhood vaccines dropping from in the 80s in recent years down to 72 percent.

That same poll also reinforced how the elevation of Kennedy and the re-elevation of Trump could push those numbers further away from the position Cassidy and Tillis prefer — at least to the extent Kennedy and Trump continue pushing the ideas they’ve pushed for years.

About as many Republicans said they had at least a “fair amount” of trust in Trump (84 percent) and Kennedy (81 percent) for health recommendations as said the same for their own doctor (84 percent). They were significantly more likely to trust Trump and Kennedy than National Institutes of Health scientists (51 percent) and state and local health officials (46 percent).

All of which shows how Kennedy’s brand of vaccine skepticism is and could continue to be on the march on the right. And assuming the full Senate confirms him, as appears likely, and Kennedy doesn’t suddenly disown his years-long quest to undercut vaccines, Republicans are making him the grand marshal.