Lauren Boebert is latest GOP lawmaker to compare vaccine advocates to 'Nazis'

Yet another GOP lawmaker has invoked Nazis in an effort to attack President Joe Biden’s plan to help get Americans vaccinated against deadly yet preventable COVID-19.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) called the Biden administration’s team of people going door to door in an effort to reach vaccine holdouts to get the jab “Needle Nazis.”

“Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis to Mesa County,” Boebert tweeted Thursday morning. “The people of my district are more than smart enough to make their own decisions about the experimental vaccine and don’t need coercion by federal agents. Did I wake up in Communist China?”

Boebert joins Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in comparing the Biden administration’s vaccination push to Nazi tactics — something Jewish groups and Democrats have slammed as offensive and out of bounds.

Greene, for her part, called the people Biden wants to send door to door to help convince people to get vaccinated “brownshirts.” Brownshirts were supporters of Adolf Hitler and helped aid in the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party that carried out one of the worst genocides in history.

Greene had apologized in June after she first compared requirements that people either wear masks or get vaccinated against COVID-19 to the way Jews were treated by Nazis, saying that she had realized her words were “offensive” and “hurtful.”

Yet less than a month later, Greene was back making similar comparisons.

Now, Boebert has joined in on the effort, as she and other Republicans condemn Biden’s plans to ramp up the effort to get more people vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday, Biden announced his plan to send people door to door to help convince people to get vaccinated, saying in a speech at the White House:

“Please get vaccinated now. It works. It’s free. It’s never been easier, and it’s never been more important. Do it now for yourself and the people you care about, for your neighborhood, for your country. It sounds corny, but it’s a patriotic thing to do.”

The effort by Republican lawmakers to cast doubt about the safety of vaccines, and turn the vaccination effort political, has had negative consequences.

Polls show that Republicans are far less likely than Democrats to say they either have gotten vaccinated or will get vaccinated in the future.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll published over the weekend found that 86% of Democrats say they have received at least one dose of the vaccine, with another 7% saying they are likely to get it in the future.

Meanwhile, a whopping 47% of Republicans say they are unlikely to get vaccinated, with 38% of those saying they definitely won’t get the shot.

To date, 55% of the U.S. population has gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to data from the New York Times. But so-called “Blue” states, where Democrats won statewide, have far higher vaccination rates than “Red” states, where Republicans dominate in statewide elections.

And it’s those Red states where Donald Trump won, including Missouri, that are seeing outbreaks of the deadly virus as the more transmissible Delta variant takes hold.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.