Vaccinations have become a political football this week. With measles spreading in California and other states, Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and, more forcefully, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are making a case that parents should be given wide berth to decide whether they should vaccinate their children against preventable diseases. Christie walked back his statement a bit, while Paul doubled down, going so far as to say that while he personally supports vaccines, he's "heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines."
All this focus on Republicans, especially those seen running for president in 2016, had journalists digging up comments then-candidate Barack Obama made in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, in April 2008. The New York Times, for instance, reports that "Obama acknowledged the concern as a candidate in 2008, saying, 'Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines, this person included.'" But he wasn't talking about himself, he was pointing to the person who asked about vaccine-autism links, as this video of the event shows:
The video, by the way, was "excavated by the conservative PAC American Commitment — and it was a unicorn-rare incident of an oppo team coming up with something that made its target look a little better," says David Weigel at Bloomberg. "Obama isn't exonerated in that clip," Weigel adds, but he "made his remarks before the final demolishing of Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study that inspired the 'anti-vaxxer' movement." A candidate in 2015 who "executes a similar face-plant" doesn't have that excuse.
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