The scale of the Republican hypocrisy on the Ebola crisis is breathtaking. Republicans, shamefully criticizing President Barack Obama’s response to the problem, are like someone who drills a hole in the bottom of a ship and then blames the captain for sinking it.

The latest outbreak of Republican hypocrisy is the party’s response to Ron Klain’s appointment as the Ebola czar. The GOP has some nerve criticizing the president for appointing someone with a political background to take the lead in the federal government’s response to the disease. We would have a medical professional already in place to fight the disease if the GOP had acted in the public interest.



The GOP criticism of Klain’s appointment is wrong for two reasons.

As a former chief of staff to Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore, Klain has a track record of getting things done in Washington, and that’s what we need to coordinate the federal response to Ebola, which will only be effective if the many federal agencies with jurisdiction work together. Klain is just the guy with the political wherewithal to get all the appropriate agencies to move in the right direction to work effectively together. Klain and the surgeon general of the United States would make a great team to lead the fight if the U.S. actually had a surgeon general

Sadly we don’t have one because the GOP has blocked a vote on the president’s nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to the post. Murthy has the ideal background for the job: Currently he is a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the best hospitals in the nation. He is also an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Murphy has a medical degree and an MBA from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard.



Why would GOP senators have blocked a vote on the nomination of a doctor with medical credentials such as Murthy’s? The answer, of course, is the iron grip the National Rifle Association has on the Republican Party. The NRA objects to Murthy’s nomination because he believes that guns are a public health hazard. And it’s pretty obvious to everybody except the NRA die-hards that guns are a clear and present danger since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there were 335,609 gun deaths in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. If that’s not an epidemic, nothing is.

So far the GOP has not responded to the crisis. Texas is the epicenter of the disease's outbreak in the U.S., and GOP Gov. Rick Perry has been MIA. The governor decided his highest priority was to build up foreign policy credibility for his 2016 presidential campaign by travelling to Europe. Politico's Katie Glueck put it best when she wrote, "Ebola came to Texas. And Rick Perry went to Europe."

