Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden echoed the national GOP talking points this morning when she said that the party’s convention comes second to concern for the residents of the Gulf states who are being pounded by Hurricane Gustav. Now isn’t the time for politics, she said in an interview on KNPR-FM 88.9’s State of Nevada.

Whereupon she immediately engaged in politics, saying the new governor of Louisiana — Bobby Jindal, a Republican — was doing a much better job with handling the crisis than his predecessor, who just happened to be Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat who was in office when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Now, in a sense, we can’t blame the Republicans for being sensitive about hurricanes. When Katrina hit, the federal response was so incompetent, it will forever be a synonym for Republican failure. Yes, there were plenty of Democrats around who could and should have done better, but ultimately, agencies under federal control were so riddled with cronyism and Republican-built bureaucracy, they were unable to function.

And that’s nowhere more true than with President George W. Bush, who was incurious in his pre-Katrina briefings, unbothered on one of his many vacations when the storm hit and unhurried in devoting his full attention toward the crisis, stopping to celebrate John McCain’s birthday, cake and all, on his way to Washington D.C. So much so, in fact, that when McCain told Fox News Sunday this week that “It wouldn’t be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near-tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster,” the evocation of Bush was unmistakable, even if unintended. The images of Bush — flying over the disaster zone in Air Force One; saying, “you’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie” — are too indelibly written in the American mind.

This time, having learned an important political lesson, if not necessarily a humanitarian one, Republicans are doing things differently. Bush is skipping the Republican convention entirely, and has repaired to near the disaster zone to personally oversee the situation. There is, we’re told, better cooperation between the federal and state governments. A mandatory evacuation order from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin went out earlier, and more clearly, than in Katrina.

The results have yet to be seen, but there’s no doubt things will be better this time. And the fact that a hurricane — the see-it-live on national TV event that so undermined the Bush administration’s CEO-mythos — is the thing that’s disrupting Republican festivities in Minneapolis-St. Paul? Well, that’s just what they call historical irony.