First, natural disasters become humanitarian emergencies primarily due to poor preparation and response, either through incompetence or poverty. For instance, a 2010 earthquake in Haiti killed perhaps 100,000 people, while a much, much stronger one in Chile killed only 525 (mainly due to superior building construction). The United States is very rich, and should be able to handle anything short of the most severe disasters.

But Republicans are not only apathetic and incompetent at governance in general, they are particularly terrible at emergency response. Democrats, for all their other faults, are generally pretty good at this. President Clinton appointed James Lee Witt to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who was widely hailed as turning the agency into a model of competence and efficiency.

George W. Bush immediately destroyed that effectiveness with cronyism and corruption, appointing his oafish horse breeder pal Michael Brown (a man with zero disaster management experience) to run FEMA, who then grotesquely botched the response to Hurricane Katrina. At least 1,245 people died as a result. President Obama successfully restored basic competence among the disaster agencies, and managed an Ebola outbreak and numerous hurricanes of his own without any massive death tolls.