At pickleball recently, I made the following point to a fellow player: every instance I can think of where a politician imposed or supported lockdowns yet violated the letter or spirit himself of herself is a Democrat. Art Carden talks about the hypocrites here. Notice the names: Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Washington mayor Muriel Bowser, Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, and California governor Gavin Newsom. All are Democrats. Art could have also mentioned Denver mayor Michael Hancock and U.S. Senator from California Dianne Feinstein.

My pickleball friend had a comeback. She said, “That’s because it’s Democrats imposing the lockdowns. Republican governors aren’t.”

I answered, “That’s not true. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Larry Hogan of Maryland have pretty extreme lockdowns and I haven’t heard or seen any evidence that they’ve been hypocritical.”

I made this point to a fellow libertarian the other day, a man who is generally nuanced. He answered, “I have no desire to defend Republicans.” Neither do I. I do want, though, to note and report evidence.

I think the hypocrisy about lockdowns is almost entirely one-sided: it’s Democrats.

This doesn’t mean that Republicans can’t be, and aren’t, hypocritical.  Ted Cruz often talks about this father escaping from Cuba and there’s no doubt that he wants people to think it was good for his father to escape from Cuba. But Cruz has been horribly hypocritical recently in trying to prevent Chinese people from escaping from Hong Kong to come here.

So the hypocrisy is on both sides.

But on lockdowns, it’s not.