Hurricane Isaac is on target to Florida starting tomorrow night. Currently the storm is off the coast of Cuba, but being over open, warm water means that Isaac has the fuel it needs to gain strength.
As we know the Republican convention starts in Tampa this week. There has already been talk in the media of delaying it, but Reince Priebus, the RNC chair, has vowed that won’t happen.
Now this makes me wonder a few things. Let’s take a walk down a hypothetical, but probably road.
Say Isaac ends up gaining more steam than the computer models are predicting and even moves a little more to the east, giving Tampa a more direct hit. Certainly Tampa officials would issue evacuation orders. So if that happens and the RNC decides to ignore them, another strong possibility by what Priebus is saying, should the government not help those in attendance should they need it?
That’s a very serious question and I only bring it up because of the right’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. Remember back then? The right didn’t blame the totally botched response of the government, but rather the people for not listening to the warnings. Well they are prepared to do the same here.
There’s another issue to look at here – the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center. These are funded by taxpayers and provide a very much needed life saving service. For years the GOP has tried to strip funding from these agencies, saying that the private sector should handle it.
So if they did decide to evacuate, or end up doing some sort of contingency plan due to Isaac, doesn’t that smell of high irony? I mean here you got the people trying to get rid of the agency that tracks these storms relying heavily upon them right now.
Isaac isn’t as bad as Katrina and has no chance of becoming that bad. It doesn’t have enough time to gain that kind of strength and Tampa and New Orleans are two totally different cities, but what I pointed out above does show exactly the kind of thinking the GOP engages in and just how wrong they are for it.