Paul goes further than Christie did, actually. Christie never said “most” vaccines should be voluntary, just that there should be a balance between liberty and public health interests for each disease. Even Mr. Libertarian seems willing to tip the balance towards state coercion in cases of especially deadly, infectious viruses like smallpox. All we’re arguing about is where the line should be. Flu? Hepatitis B?

Fun fact: This audio was uploaded to YouTube by an account called “DNC_Clips” even though Christie’s position is basically indistinguishable from the White House’s.

White House said on Jan 30 that vaccine science is "really clear" but the decision is up to parents pic.twitter.com/IkDDhbOENP

— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) February 2, 2015

So the reigning Democratic nominee for president also believes that parents should have a say. Meanwhile, per the Daily Caller, the future Democratic nominee was gung ho to investigate possible links between vaccination and autism the last time she ran for president. So the Democratic leadership is at least as “nuanced” as top Republicans are on this subject, and the current measles outbreak originated not in some right-wing anti-government camp in the woods but in well-heeled blue enclaves in California. So how is it, Dan Foster wonders, that we’re seeing the anti-vax movement metamorphosing into an exclusively Republican phenomenon in the media today? He answered his own question:

https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/status/562303629735260160

Exactly. The fact that it’s Christie, the moderate “sensible” blue-state centrist, who instigated the feeding frenzy this morning is a bonus. They were always planning to attack Rand Paul and Ted Cruz as kooks, but that doesn’t benefit Democrats much. Conservatives know as well as lefties do that the GOP nominee is likely to come from the center-right. If you’re a Democrat and you care about boosting your chances of holding the White House, the guys you really want to kookify are Christie, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio, the ones who can compete more easily for independents. That’s why they’re piling on Christie for … holding the same position as Obama.

Note how quick Rand is, by the way, to distinguish his position from Rick Perry’s position on the HPV vaccine, which got him in trouble with some social cons in the last primary.