RNC konventet inställs

RNC konventet inställs, åtminstone tillfälligt, för att avvakta och se konsekvenserna av Orkanen Gustav. New Orleans, staden som för tre år sedan nästan total förstördes, har nu evakuerats i god tid på förhand. Nationen är dessutom avsevärt bättre förberedd än den var 2005. Exakt vilken materiell förödelse Gustav kan tänkas skapa återstår dock att se. Men såväl McCain som Vita Huset verkar anse det olämpligt att hålla RNC konventet mitt i den nationella krisen. Både Bush och Cheney som var tänkt att tala idag har ställt in, och Bush har begett sig till Texas där han ska möta hjälparbetare.

McCain själv förklarade via telefon att invigningsdagen skärs ned, och i princip inställs -bortsett från en del formaliteter.

Detta är första gången i modern valhistoria som ett konvent ställts in, eller planerna för miljontals dollar så abrupt kastats om. Det är inte troligt att konventet alls (som kräver månader av förberedelser och miljontals med pengar) kommer att bli vad det var tänkt att vara, och precis som ovissheten kring Gustav inte ger oss något besked om stormens konsekvenser, så är det idagsläget lika svårt att veta vilka konsekvenser som kan drabba McCain utan ett riktigt konvent.

Yahoo News skriver:

Storm sucks air out of GOP's sails

M.E. SprengelmeyerMon Sep 1, 12:45 AM ET

The sun was shining through partly cloudy skies, but a Category 4 storm of uncertainty blew into the Republican National Convention's host city Sunday.

Though more than 1,000 miles to the south, Hurricane Gustav played havoc with the festivities planned to coronate Sen. John McCain as the Republican presidential nominee.

In a surreal scene inside the Xcel Energy Center, hundreds of journalists crammed into a small ballroom to stare into a television screen as McCain appeared via satellite from Missouri and announced that all but perfunctory party business would be scrapped on the first day of the convention while the nation sends its thoughts and prayers to the people of the Gulf Coast.

"This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics, and we have to act as Americans," McCain said.

Instead of a daylong celebration of McCain's candidacy and expected attacks on Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama, all McCain and his newly named running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, can do is wait out the storm.

Delayed bounce

The suspension of the usual political fun and games - for the first day and perhaps beyond - is unprecedented in modern politics. In the television age, the national party conventions are carefully choreographed as public relations springboards to give presidential tickets a big "bounce" upward in the polls.

Now, the uncertainty has made downtown St. Paul resemble more of a high-security ghost town compared with the festive, crowd-filled streets of downtown Denver during last week's Democratic National Convention.

And it has put McCain's hopes in limbo at a time when he needs to regain the spotlight after Obama's history-making acceptance speech before more than 80,000 people inside Invesco Field at Mile High and an estimated 40 million American television viewers at home.

McCain had been hoping to get his own bounce and celebrate Palin, a little-known Washington outsider, whose selection was greeted enthusiastically by many Republicans but questioned by some pundits, both liberal and conservative, because of her relative youth and lack of foreign policy experience.

"The Palin selection completely undercuts the argument about Obama's inexperience and readiness to lead," conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote last week. "To gratuitously undercut the remarkably successful 'Is he ready to lead?' line of attack seems near suicidal."

But Palin's big coming-out party will have to wait.

Other things to cover

Normal convention activities might have backfired against Republicans with national television networks broadcasting political coverage in a split screen, showing an ominous weather radar map of New Orleans as a constant, painful reminder of the botched government response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

So McCain urged party members to "take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats" and pull together to help the people of the Gulf Coast states.

"America needs us now, whether we are Republican or Democrat," McCain said.

After Republicans announced their scaled-back convention plans, the Democratic National Committee followed suit by cancelling the daily "More of the Same" briefings they had been planning in St. Paul.

Already, some of the 15,000 national and international reporters who flocked to the convention have booked new flights for the region bracing for the hurricane.

Many had planned to cover appearances by President Bush and Vice President Cheney at the convention Monday. But those appearances have been canceled, along with other political speeches.

Instead, that might mean more attention for one event that is going forward as scheduled: a march of tens of thousands of war protesters through the streets of Minnesota's capital city. Advance media reports suggest that the street demonstrations could be more tense than those in Denver last week. St. Paul-area authorities reportedly raided locations where demonstrators had been mobilizing.

Colorado's Republican delegates were taking the uncertainty in stride.

"It's definitely unfortunate," said delegate Guy Short, of Erie. "We will get our work done here, but the first and foremost concern is any damage caused by a hurricane."

At the convention site, reporters pressed McCain campaign manager Rick Davis for answers on when the regular convention would resume.

Davis promised daily briefings but added: "There's no pattern to how we will react to this."

Staff writer Lynn Bartels contributed to this story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/rockymountainnews/20080901/pl_rockymountainnews/stormsucksairoutofgopssails 2008-09-01

Och här skriver New York Times en artikel om orkanen:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/02gustav.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin