In a bipartisan vote Tuesday, March 15th, the Senate passed a resolution introduced by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) ending the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate for public transportation, including air travel. The resolution now heads to the House.

In a statement on his official website Paul said:

“Today, the Senate said enough is enough, and sent a message to unelected government bureaucrats to stop the anti-science, nanny state requirement of travel mask mandates,” said Dr. Paul. “Since March 2020, unelected bureaucrats have incessantly declared that we should ‘follow the science.’ But the same bureaucrats continue to defy science by imposing an ineffective and restrictive mask mandate for individuals travelling on public transit and airplanes. As the entire world is learning to live with COVID, the federal government still uses fear mongering to stubbornly perpetuate its mandates, rather than giving clear-eyed, rational advice on how to best protect yourself from illness. That is why I forced this vote, and I applaud the Senate for rejecting this nonsense.”

The vote was 57-40, with one Republican voting against the resolution: Mitt Romney.

A GOP aide in Romney's office says he voted against Sen. Rand Paul’s measure to repeal travel mask mandates because, as he has been vocal about in the past, he believes it’s important for public health officials to make these types of decisions, not politicians

— Ali Zaslav (@alizaslav) March 16, 2022

At least he didn’t blame Tulsi Gabbard.

It is curious that while Romney claims to be following the science in this matter, the reality amply demonstrates genuine science following would have demanded a “yes” vote. As originally reported in the Washington Examiner:

In sum, of the 14 RCTs that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless — whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone — or actually counterproductive.

Long story short, the masks don’t work.

Romney’s vote maintains a behavioral pattern of siding with Democrats for the apparent sake of positioning himself as the moderate alternative for a 2024 Presidential run. Be it his recent bizarre tweet accusing Gabbard of treason, publicly siding with Liz Cheney, or inability to not take public swipes at Donald Trump no matter how forced the inserted reference may be, Romney is a classic example of someone trying much too hard to straddle the fence. It’s not like he hasn’t previously agreed with Paul on matters. So unless The Gospel According to St. Fauci has suddenly found its way into the Book of Mormon, what gives?