For Republicans — and conservative media outlets — it’s time for panic about ebola. | AP Photos GOP 2016ers on Ebola: Panic

For once, President Barack Obama and Texas Gov. Rick Perry are on the same page. At separate briefings on the Ebola crisis, Obama administration officials and Perry have delivered the same message: Don’t panic — the health authorities know what they’re doing.

But for other Republicans — and conservative media outlets — it’s time for panic.


The likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates — except for Perry — are practically lining up to warn that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to keep Ebola out of the United States, now that Dallas is dealing with the nation’s first confirmed case.

( Also on POLITICO: Jindal: Ban travel from Ebola nations)

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky declared on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that “this could get beyond our control” and worried, “Can you imagine if a whole ship full of our soldiers catch Ebola?”

Sen. Ted Cruz — Perry’s Texas colleague — raised the prospect of restricting or banning flights to the West African countries that are hardest hit by the disease, noting in a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration that some African nations and certain airlines have already imposed their own flight bans.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin floated the idea of quarantining airline passengers in the affected African countries before they could fly out. “We’re learning a lot about how it’s spread but the question is ‘How can a person just jump on a plane and get here without a quarantine period of 21 days,’ which I believe is recommended,” he said on a radio talk show Wednesday. A spokesman for Ryan says the congressman misspoke and was referencing a recommendation to be monitored for 21 days.

And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal says the United States should cut off flights from those countries. “President Obama said it was ‘unlikely’ that Ebola would reach the U.S. Well, it has, and we need to protect our people,” he said in a statement Friday.

( Also on POLITICO: D.C. hospital monitoring for Ebola)

In fact, of the 2016 Republican hopefuls who have commented on the Ebola crisis, Perry is the only one who has been a reassuring voice.

At a Wednesday press conference in Dallas, he made all of the points public health experts make to reduce public fears: You can’t catch it by breathing it, people aren’t contagious before they have any symptoms, and it’s much harder to catch than the common cold. And he gave public health officials a strong vote of confidence: “Rest assured that our system is working as it should. Professionals on every level of the chain of command know what to do to minimize this potential risk to the people of Texas and of this country, for that matter.”

If anything, the calmer voices have been coming from Republicans who aren’t about to jump into the White House race. Paul’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul, took the opposite line from his son — he warned people not to overreact. John Cornyn, the other Texas senator, asked the administration about passenger screening, but not flight bans.

And House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, in a statement announcing a hearing on the crisis, declared that “the United States has a first-class health care system and we will do everything necessary to treat the sick, contain the threat, and protect the public health.”

( Also on POLITICO: Cruz to FAA: Keep Ebola out of U.S.)

It’s a glaring contrast, but most public health experts — including GOP health care experts — say there’s nothing wrong with the 2016 Republicans raising questions about the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s safeguards against Ebola, or asking whether stronger measures should be taken.

It’s the tone that makes all the difference in the world — especially for politicians who are basically auditioning for the role of commander in chief.

“It’s not that we should close our minds. It’s that they shouldn’t jump to extreme recommendations in public like this,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. “It gets in the way of reasoned discourse and public education.”

In fact, it was Perry — the error-prone 2012 presidential candidate — who got the best reviews for his efforts to calm the public about the Dallas Ebola case. “I thought he did pretty well,” Schaffner said. “My hat was off to him.”

Perry’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on the harder line the other Republicans have taken.

The tone of the other 2016 Republicans was practically subdued, however, compared to the coverage of the Dallas Ebola case in some conservative media outlets. In the Washington Free Beacon, for example, an article by conservative commentator Matthew Continetti carried the headline: “The Case for Panic.”

Follow @politico

And then there’s good, old-fashioned distrust of the Obama administration — which is now being directed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On “Fox & Friends,” anchor Steve Doocy read a viewer email to CDC Director Tom Frieden: “This is a political thing, but you’re part of the administration — they feel that the administration has misled a lot of people on a lot of things. Why should we believe you when you’re telling us this stuff?”

There could be more hard-line suggestions from rank-and-file Republicans, too. On Friday, four Arkansas lawmakers — including Rep. Tom Cotton, who’s running against Sen. Mark Pryor in one of the tightest Senate races in the country — suggested suspending thousands of visas for people from the African countries affected by the outbreak.

GOP health care experts say, however, that it’s fine for the 2016 Republicans to ask questions about why the Obama administration isn’t imposing a flight ban or quarantining potentially sick travelers — because those are the questions many Americans are asking.

“These are pretty much reasonable questions to ask. Even if the answer is no … they ought to explain why the answer is whatever it is,” said Gail Wilensky, a former Medicare administrator under President George H.W. Bush.

“I think we should be talking about these things. It doesn’t mean we have to do them, but taking them off the table is not helpful,” said Tevi Troy, president of the American Health Policy Institute and a former deputy Health and Human Services secretary.

The Obama administration has been arguing against a flight ban or quarantining communities, insisting that isolating the West African countries would be impractical and would backfire by making it harder to treat Ebola in those countries.

At a White House briefing Friday, Lisa Monaco, a White House adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism, argued that a flight ban would “actually impede the response” because it would make it harder to get medical help to the region. She also argued that the screening at airports in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — using procedures developed by CDC — has already been effective because “many, many people, dozens of people, have been stopped from traveling.”

In an article Friday in the Financial Times, Frieden argued that “when countries are isolated, it is harder to get medical supplies and personnel deployed to stop the spread of Ebola.” Besides, he wrote, isolating people will increase their distrust of government and make them less cooperative — and people will find other ways to get out of those countries anyway.

“We can’t just isolate ourselves from the world … [and] the last thing those countries need is even more isolation,” said Schaffner. “It’s simply not going to work, and it’s not helpful.”

Wilensky agreed that a quarantine “does not seem feasible,” but added that “you need a reasonable discussion about why.” The answer, she said, is that if a quarantine is too onerous, “people aren’t going to ’fess up” if they’ve been exposed to Ebola.

And a travel ban “makes no sense,” she said, because “if people want to get here, they’ll get here. … When we live in a global age, bad things spread.”

Troy said it’s not a good idea for the administration to rule out a travel ban under any circumstances, because their thinking could change depending on how bad the outbreak gets. But it would cause problems, he said — not just because of the economic impact to the already devastated West African countries, but also because Americans and aid workers could get stuck there.

“What about Americans in the affected region? Then they’d have trouble getting out. What about compassionate aid workers who are helping patients in those countries? Do you want to make it harder for them to get out?” Troy asked. “The travel ban is not at all simple.”

Troy warned, however, that the CDC needs to be careful not to sound overconfident that public health officials have every danger covered — and should be “a little sharper in telling people that there will be other Ebola cases.”

“You need to avoid panic. You don’t want everyone showing up at the ER,” Troy said. “On the other hand, if you’re too Pollyanna-ish, people don’t believe you.”

The administration is already acknowledging that there could be other cases — although officials still insist that the system is good enough to keep them from spreading.

“It is entirely possible that we will see another case,” Monaco said Friday, but “we have a public health infrastructure and medical officials who are capable of dealing with cases if they present themselves. We are confident that we can stop this in its tracks.”