Republicans have painted themselves into a corner by undermining vaccines. Nowhere is this clearer than Florida, where the outgoing Republican governor and his potential successor have tried to use vaccine mandates to align themselves with President Donald Trump’s politically risky position.

Governor Ron DeSantis rode his COVID-era public health skepticism to national prominence. Now his administration, in its waning months, is trying to further erode vaccine mandates that require children to get shots before they can attend school.

It’s a tough time to sell that policy. As of Aug. 20, the CDC reported 2,777 confirmed measles cases in the U.S., and the country is on track to have more cases this year than any time in the last 35 years.

That puts the Republican nominee for governor, Representative Byron Donalds, in a tough spot.

Margaret Brennan of CBS asked Donalds last week what his message to parents is as “Nearly all of Florida is below the 95% immunization rate for herd immunity for measles.”

With a straight face, Donalds blamed the state’s measles outbreak on “rampant illegal immigration into the United States from the previous administration.”

It was a clumsy and misleading attempt to find a way out of a political bind. The GOP — having advocated against vaccine mandates during COVID — now finds itself on the losing end of an issue at a time deaths from measles are scaring parents.

Republican pollsters have warned for months that an overwhelming number of voters — including a supermajority of Make America Healthy Again voters — in the nation’s 35 most competitive congressional districts say that childhood vaccines save lives and “are the best defense against many infectious diseases.”

“Republicans or Democrats adopting positions that remove long-standing vaccine recommendations would negatively impact their party’s performance,” wrote Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward in a December memo. If these candidates support eliminating such requirements, they added, they “will pay a price in the election.”

The GOP has even found itself at odds on the issue with the Catholic Church.

In July, as parents were scheduling their kids’ back-to-school doctor’s appointments, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops challenging its policy on vaccination exemptions for children in Florida’s Catholic schools.

Florida law allows parents to seek an exemption from a public school’s vaccine mandate if it conflicts with a parent’s religious beliefs. But Florida’s Catholic schools do not issue religious exemptions for vaccines because, as the bishops noted in a letter to Uthmeier, vaccines do not violate Catholic teachings.

Uthmeier, who is Catholic, argued that Catholic teaching does not forbid individuals from seeking religious exemptions and warned that noncompliance could jeopardize a school’s eligibility for state educational voucher programs. It was not an empty threat. About 88% of the more than 94,000 students enrolled in Catholic schools use state vouchers to help pay tuition.

But Thomas Wenski, the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Miami, forcefully pushed back. And he underscored the most important issue.

“Our vaccination policies are in place to advance the common good,” he wrote in an op-ed. “This position is rooted in our Catechism: ‘Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good.’”

It’s a good argument. And ironically, it is the same conclusion the GOP pollsters reached — and the conclusion Florida legislators drew when they concluded that reducing the vaccine schedule is not only politically unpopular, but fundamentally unwise.

For two years, DeSantis has attempted to pass laws to remove some vaccines from the state’s school vaccination requirements. But lawmakers, led by the state House, have blocked his efforts.

Days after Uthmeier’s exchange with the Catholic Church, the Florida Department of Health attempted to bypass lawmakers by proposing a rule removing four vaccines from the childhood vaccine list. The move followed President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order that directed federal agencies to reduce the number of recommended vaccines for children from 18 to 11 immunizations. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he hoped states would follow the president’s lead.

Both lists still include the measles vaccine, but needlessly open the door to more vaccine skepticism and childhood risk.

At a news conference in Tampa last week, Kennedy was asked about Florida’s proposal to limit vaccines. He used the same argument DeSantis, Uthmeier and Donalds have used: that vaccination should be a parent’s choice because it is a “medical intervention” that is “designed to permanently alter their immune system.”

That talking point sounded a lot better to voters before thousands of people were needlessly infected with measles. Rather than continuing to defend it, Republicans should support the science-backed views the vast majority of Americans already hold.

Painting yourself into a corner is a mistake. Staying in that corner is a bigger one.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.

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