When It Comes To Disaster Responses, There Is A Trend All Right

09 May, 2007 by John Hawkins

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Here’s a quote from a New York Times article on the attempt of Kathleen Sebelius to blame George Bush for her slow and incompetent response to a tornado in Kansas,

As State Senator Donald Betts Jr., Democrat of Wichita, put it: “We should have had National Guard troops there right after the tornado hit, securing the place, pulling up debris, to make sure that if there was still life, people could have been saved. The response time was too slow, and it’s becoming a trend. We saw this after Katrina, and it’s like history repeating itself.”

Oh, it’s a trend all right. When Republican governors like Jeb Bush in Florida or Haley Barbour from Mississippi have disasters in their state, they handle them fairly well. When Democrats like Kathleen Blanco in Louisiana and Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas screw them up because they’re incompetent, they blame George Bush because they know the media will ignore the fact that disaster response is primarily a local responsibility.

It’s really no different with the big cities. Show me the worst run cities in America, cities like New Orleans and DC, and I’ll show you cities run top to bottom by Democrats who blame Republicans for their incompetence.

On the one hand, you almost can’t blame the Democrats for pulling this sort of ruse over and over again, because it works for them. But, on the other hand, at some point, you have to wonder when the people voting these liberals in will start to smarten up a little bit and figure out that they’re maintaining the rotten environment in the place that they live by voting in the people who are largely responsible for it.

PS: Speaking of people smartening up, it’s nice to see the White House firing back at Sebelius instead of letting a myth develop, as it did after Katrina, that Bush was responsible for the incompetence of the locals.

“The White House fought back Tuesday against criticism from Kansas’ governor that National Guard deployments to Iraq are slowing the response to last week’s devastating tornado.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said the fault was Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’.

…Even as Snow insisted he wasn’t trying to get into a political tussle with the Democratic governor, he aggressively defended the administration’s performance.

“As far as we know, the only thing the governor has requested are FM radios,” Snow said. “There have been no requests to the National Guard for heavy equipment.”

He went on to say that the president’s disaster declaration for Kansas, issued Sunday, immediately made funding available to get heavy equipment through private contractors.

“We are eager to provide what Kansas needs,” Snow said. “But again there are also – you also have to go through the process of making the request first.”

Snow said “I’m not aware of any prior complaints,” and said it would be “standard procedure” when a tornado hits for a state to consult its disaster plan and start making assessments about where the federal government needed to step in.

“We are certainly going to try to clean up any misunderstandings about how this works,” Snow said.

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback also disputed Sebelius after visiting the destroyed town on Monday. Brownback, a Republican candidate for president, said local officials and the Kansas National Guard commander all told him they have the resources needed to respond.

“That’s what really got me, is her saying that,” Brownback said of Sebelius.”