Three years ago today, Hurricane Katrina struck the Louisiana coast.
Three years later, there’s a storm named Gustav that may just do the same thing:
NEW ORLEANS — An unsettling sense of the past repeating itself pervaded this city on Wednesday as Tropical Storm Gustav crept this way through the Caribbean, two days before Hurricane Katrina’s third anniversary.
Residents bought emergency supplies, evacuation plans were dusted off, a municipal help hot line was flooded with calls, and the mayor rushed home from the Democratic National Convention, even as officials warned that it was too early to predict where the storm would hit.
Louisiana’s governor, Bobby Jindal, declared a pre-emptive state of emergency, mobilizing 3,000 National Guard members.
Any damage to New Orleans on the eve of next week’s Republican Convention in Minnesota could also serve as a politically tinged reminder of the Bush administration’s ineffective response to Hurricane Katrina.
More to come, I’m sure.
As for the political consequences, Shaun Mullen makes this point:
If the Bush Years were plotted on a fever chart, the key turning point triggering the descent to the Great Abyss of Unpopularity was Hurricane Katrina.
While the war in Iraq remained pretty much an abstraction, albeit an increasingly unpleasant one, when the Category 5 storm made landfall three year ago today, people were incredulous, incensed and finally angered that the White House’s response was an indifference that put the final nail in the coffin of compassionate conservatism.
As a great believer in karma, it is difficult for me to not notice that the primary projected track of Tropical Storm Gustav is virtually identical to Katrina’s. It is probable that Gustav will regain hurricane strength as it enters warmer Gulf of Mexico waters and possible that it will make landfall on Monday as the Republican National Convention opens.
Not exactly the way McCain would have planned it, I’m guessing.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I see Limbaugh has picked up the story line of the media rooting for Hurricane Gustav to slam New Orleans so they can gain points for Obama by rehashing Hurricane Katrina.
Kudos to http://www.notwrightforamerica.com for pointing out last night how the media,especially MSNBC, were cheering Gustav on.