In last spring’s Republican primary, U.S. Senate candidate Thom Tillis ran an ad touting his fight against an expanded Medicaid program. “Thom Tillis has a proven record fighting against Obamacare,” the narrator said. “Tillis stopped Obama’s Medicaid expansion cold. It’s not happening in North Carolina, and it’s because of Thom Tillis.”

Fear of Ebola has been climbing steadily in the United States since Tuesday's announcement that a Liberian traveler in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan, was diagnosed with the disease after having been in Texas for eight days. A month ago, a Harvard School of Public Health poll found that 39 percent of Americans thought an Ebola outbreak would come to the United States, and 26 percent felt concerned that they or a member of their family would get the disease.