Lately it seems like Republicans' two favorite things are voter suppression and mocking people who take COVID-19 seriously. So it probably should surprise no one that in a recent tweet, the Texas Republican Party seemed to be trying to kill two birds with one stone.
The state party recently tweeted a photo that has become something of a sign of the times lately: people waiting in long lines for COVID-19 testing amid the surging Omicron variant outbreak and a related shortage of both test kits and testing personnel.
But according to the caption included with the photo, these endless lines mean just one thing to the Texas GOP.
There's no need for mail-in or early voting in elections.
See the tone-deaf tweet below.
The Texas GOP's tweet read:
"If you can wait in line for a covid test, you can wait in line to vote."
The tweet struck most people as a thinly veiled reference to the 2020 election, when mail-in voting became predominant for the first time due to the pre-vaccine stage of the pandemic.
Mail-in voting's supposed unreliability and ease of use for voter fraud was one of the cornerstones of Republicans' claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former Republican President Donald Trump by Democratic President Joe Biden.
Given the near total lack of evidence of mail-in voting fraud from the 2020 election, the right-wing has long since changed the focus of its election fraud claims to supposedly tampered-with voting machines--also a fallacious claim. But with the midterm elections just months away, perhaps the GOP is looking for any opportunity it can to sow distrust about mail-in voting again.
Missing from the Texas GOP's analysis is that the long lines for COVID testing are occurring because of an actual crisis, rather than long lines at polling places each election cycle, which are usually due to thinly disguised attempts at voter suppression by Republican politicians and leaders.
And as someone on Twitter pointed out, they also seemed blithely aware that, like voting, COVID testing can also be done at home.
And that was just one response that pointed out the ridiculousness of the Texas GOP's tweet, as people flooded the replies with clapbacks.
Even more ridiculous is the fact that the actual statistics for the 2020 election show that a majority of voters--some 54%--did stand in line to vote in person.
Sometimes you just lose elections because people like the other candidate better. Cool tweet, though, guys!
