Republicans to curtail convention, launch relief effort

Bush, Cheney cancel; McCain sounds a call

Senator John McCain visited a hurricane command center in Pearl, Miss., yesterday with running mate Sarah Palin. (Stephan Savoia/Associated Press)

ST. PAUL - With Hurricane Gustav barreling toward the Gulf Coast, Senator John McCain and the Republican Party hastily edited their national convention script yesterday, calling for a stripped-down affair that replaces politics, parties, and pageantry with a humanitarian aid effort for those in the storm's path more than 1,000 miles south of St. Paul.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney, both of whom were scheduled to address the convention tonight, canceled plans to come to St. Paul and instead will monitor the government's response to the gathering storm.

Gustav was poised to come ashore near New Orleans three years and three days after Hurricane Katrina obliterated parts of the same city and nearby sections of the Gulf Coast. In what came to be seen as a national embarrassment, federal agencies responded so erratically and ineffectually that poor residents were stranded for days.

In a video link from St. Louis, McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee, said it was time "to go from a party event to a call to the nation for action . . . reaching out with our hands and our hearts and our wallets to the people who are under such great threat from this great natural disaster." He called on conventioneers, assembling here for what was supposed to be a four-day party celebration, "to take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats and say, Americans we are with you." His remarks dovetail with the convention's overarching theme of "Country First."

The sudden change appears to be without parallel in American politics. While it may deprive the Republicans a major showcase for the party's nominees in the November, it also provides McCain an opportunity to lead his party during a national humanitarian effort.

McCain appeared on a monitor in a media room about 200 yards away from the convention floor where workers were putting the finishing touches on bunting and signs , and testing sound equipment, the culmination of almost two years of planning and eight weeks of work on the floor of the Xcel Energy Center.

Most scheduled activities, including speeches by Bush and Cheney, will be suspended for today's convention proceedings, which will be limited to essential official business, Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, told reporters at the RiverCentre, a convention facility linked to the Xcel center, a hockey arena. The convention will be called to order, accept reports of the credentials, rules, and platform committees and adjourn, Davis said.

"At some point between Monday and Thursday we will convene once again to complete the activities needed to qualify Senator McCain and Governor [Sarah] Palin for the ballot in all 50 states," Davis said. "Beyond that, all we can say is that we will monitor what is happening and make decisions about other convention business as details become available."

Davis said scheduled speakers will stay in the Twin Cities area in the event a full convention resumes, and their texts will be reviewed to make sure they are appropriate for the convention's new depoliticized tone. A plane was chartered to take about a dozen delegates back to Louisiana, he said.

Democrats also began to withdraw from the field of partisan conflict as the potential for disaster grew yesterday. The Democratic National Committee canceled a media tour yesterday of its opposition war room near the convention site as well as a briefing today, the first in a planned daily series during the convention.

Barack Obama, who accepted the Democratic nomination last Thursday after a dramatic four-day convention in Denver, also said he will mobilize his vast networks of volunteers and contributors to help victims of Gustav, the Associated Press reported.

"I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there, if it becomes necessary," Obama told reporters after attending St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Lima, Ohio. "I think we can activate an e-mail list of a couple of million people who want to give back," he said. Donations could include cash, goods, and individual labor, he said, once specific needs are assessed after consulting officials in storm-hit areas.

Republican delegates supported McCain's call for a charitable mobilization and a suspension of partisanship. "It is absolutely the appropriate response," said Jean Inman, the secretary of this convention and a former chairwoman of the Massachusetts Republican Party. "The senator told us to take off our political hats, and we will." The Bay State delegation was scheduled to meet last night to discuss an appropriate response, Inman said. "I will definitely write a check."

Throughout the day yesterday, major news organizations began to redeploy personnel, including the prime network anchors, from the Twin Cities to the Gulf Coast, at the opposite end of the Mississippi River, as it became clear the storm would eclipse the convention in importance.

Robert Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist, said, "There's no precedent for this." The closest he could recall was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's acceptance of his nomination for a fourth term in 1944, during World War II. Roosevelt was on a train in California, en route to a meeting with military commanders in the Pacific, when he accepted the nomination of the convention in Chicago.

"This is a human tragedy potentially in the Gulf, and for the Republicans to be political at this point would have been a big problem for them," Shrum said. "I suspect they will try to turn this whole thing to the convention theme of 'Country First.' . . . . This will not hurt them, and it might help them. This convention would have been more of a problem than an opportunity for them."

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who advised McCain's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2000, said it was wise to tone down the political nature of this event. "Hurricane politics are like the real thing," Murphy said. "The best plan is to get out of the way. The specter of Katrina means the GOP has to e very careful how they handle this."