RNC Monday Rained Out

(AP) Storm forces GOP to scrap first day of convention
By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent
TAMPA, Fla.
Republican officials abruptly announced plans Saturday evening to scrap the first day of their national convention, bowing to a threat posed by Tropical Storm Isaac, churning toward Florida.


Priebus added that forecasters have predicted that convention-goers “may encounter severe transportation difficulties due to sustained wind and rain” on Monday, the day the convention had been scheduled to open.

The announcement said that while the convention would officially be gaveled into session on Monday as scheduled, the day’s events would be cancelled until Tuesday.

That meant Romney’s formal nomination would be postponed by a day, from Monday to Tuesday, but the balance of the four days of political pageantry and speechmaking would go on as scheduled.

The former Massachusetts governor campaigned in battleground Ohio during the day, pledging to help women entrepreneurs and innovators who are eager to create small businesses and the jobs that go with them. It was an economy-themed countdown to the Republican National Convention taking shape in a city already bristling with security _ and bracing for a possible hurricane.


The former Massachusetts governor campaigned with running mate Paul Ryan in battleground Ohio as delegates arrived in Florida by the planeload. Across town, technicians completed the conversion of a hockey arena along Tampa Bay into a red, white and blue-themed convention hall.

The announcement made the GOP convention the party’s second in a row to be disrupted by weather. Four years ago, the delegates gathered in St. Paul, Minn., but Hurricane Gustav, slamming the Gulf Coast, led to a one-day postponement.

In that case, party officials rewrote their script to make President George W. Bush’s speech into a video appearance, and to cancel plans for Vice President Dick Cheney to appear before the delegates. Both men were unpopular at the time.

Four years later, there was no immediate sign that Romney’s forces would do anything other than squeeze two nights’ of platform programming into one. Nor did it appear the postponement would cost them much, since the television networks had already announced they would not be carrying any of Monday’s events live.