OPINION:
Snap on those rubber gloves, zip up your hazmat suits, and tape up those galoshes. Get ready for the Ebola election!
The White House is in full scurry before next month’s vote, trying to feverishly scrub the taint of Ebola from President Obama and all the Democrats standing within the electoral hot zone he has become.
Things have gotten so dire that the president actually postponed a fundraiser so that he could participate in the better “optics” of a Cabinet meeting to discuss the government’s (lack of) response to the rampaging global virus.
This may seem like a small thing, but remember, this is the guy who issued personal remarks about a beheading by Islamic State terrorists — then promptly hit the golf course.
At every turn the past few weeks (months after the epidemic had become an acute crisis of global proportions), American voters have watched authorities within the administration spinning madly to minimize, downplay and dismiss a deadly, incurable disease already on the verge of claiming 4,500 lives worldwide.
Last month, White House mouthpiece Josh Earnest told Americans, “The risk of an Ebola outbreak in the United States is very low.” At the same time, he assured us that the federal government was positioned to ensure the virus would not reach the U.S.
Then it did.
After Thomas Duncan was diagnosed in Dallas, Mr. Earnest again assured us that the chances of further spread were “incredibly low.” Also, he told us that the president had “strong confidence” in Duncan’s medical care and insisted procedures were in place to prevent the spread of Ebola to any of the heroic doctors and nurses risking their lives to take care of him.
Later, that “strong confidence” gave way to a dead Duncan and two new Ebola patients.
Mr. Earnest also has assured us that the chances the virus mutates and goes airborne are “very low,” contradicting actual expert epidemiologists and virologists.
Mr. Obama’s CDC director doesn’t inspire any more confidence.
“We will stop it in its tracks,” Dr. Tom Frieden announced earlier this month after Duncan was diagnosed in Dallas. The CDC had “protocols” in place to “protect against further spread of disease.”
“We know how to stop Ebola & we will stop it here,” he tweeted.
The biggest question I have is why is it that every bureaucrat the Obama administration sends out to discuss this dire public health crisis is always spinning? Even those with seemingly scientific and medical backgrounds are unable to give straight answers about Ebola. It’s like they are all trying to pull something over on the American people.
So what is it out there that this administration finds so much scarier than Ebola? What else? An election.
In next month’s already volatile election, President Obama’s party stands to lose control of the Senate, allowing Republicans to tighten their grip on the House and essentially tank the last two years of this presidency.
How is it that Ebola has become a referendum on Obama and his Democrats in Congress?
(1) Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress are totally dedicated to obliterating America’s borders so that illegals pouring into the country from anywhere are welcomed with open arms, no matter their motives or even the health threats they pose to Americans. These illegal aliens are to be given driver’s licenses, voting cards, Obamacare and all the welfare benefits legal Americans are entitled to.
(2) Fortunately, there are strong, vibrant, wealthy countries on this planet where the rule of law is held sacred. These countries promote freedom, execute justice, protect the environment and stand ready to provide a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. For centuries now, the U.S. has been one of those countries.
Unfortunately, there are also poor, weak and uncivilized countries on this planet that are wracked by illness, terrorism and grinding civil wars. Thousands of missionaries from the U.S. dedicate their lives and fortunes to helping distressed people in these poor countries.
Yet Mr. Obama’s foreign policy doctrine is predicated upon the notion that there is no difference between the United States and these other sad countries. There is nothing exceptional about America. We are all just one, big, unhappy Third World country.
(3) The Ebola epidemic is, above all, a damning repudiation of the big government solutions so blindly embraced by Mr. Obama, particularly when it comes to health care. The best-intended government solutions have failed in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. World governments such as the United Nations and World Health Organization have been even more hapless. And now comes the Obama administration, proving itself wrong — again and again and again on an almost daily basis.
And that is why Mr. Obama and his minions have nothing left to do but spin, spin, spin. At least until Election Day.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com, or on Twitter at @charleshurt.
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