"..it would be poor form to lay into Obama a day after declaring politics off the table"

Are you suggesting that McCain won't be a hypocrite because it would be perceived as poor form? Gee, Noam, have you been following the campaign?  Well, we'll see what happens.

scrubby, you took the words right out of my mouth.

It has also allowed reporters to begin to get the truth about Sarah Palin--former Alaska Independence Party member, etc.--together without the backdrop of gushing interviews by conventioneers.  I look forward to Palin's first separate news conference.

Why is everyone being so shortsighted about this. In November nobody is going to remember that McCain had to scale back the first day of his convention. What they might remember are the Republican attacks, and pro-McCain spin which could have began on the first day of the convention and spread slowly to the ignorant swing voters. Having one less day to sell their attacks and pro-McCain spin means that they aren't going to communicate as effectively to those swing voters.

Also I want to help timteeter spread the word here. Palin was a member of and sent a video to the convention of a party called the Alaska Independence Party. They want Alaskans to have a vote with four choices

1) Remain a Territory

2) Become a separate and Independent Nation.

3) Accept Commonwealth status.

4) Become a State.

As one of their speakers said "No one, that I have every heard of, no country, no division of a country, has ever fought a war for dependance."

marcambinder.theatlantic.com/.../the_alaska_independence_party.php

John McCain has lost his marbles.

I copied the same text that scrubbyoak quoted, but found this thread three hours late. Beaten by a mile.

I think timteeter has pointed out the real loss for McCain. All of the national media was planning to show the RNC tonight, and once they were done with Gustav there was not much else to do but ask questions about Palin. From the bits that I saw, the Republicans are doing her and themselves no favors. They have tried to puff up her resume with whoppers like "Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard" being a sign of her leadership experience, which is a whopper because very few Governors actually do anything with the NG except to call it out in disasters. My wife saw McCain last night on NBC and when he was asked to back up this claim by saying what she had done, it was clear he had nothing. I saw a few other Republicans on CNN and they were floundering as well. This does not bode well for them -- it is the opposite of a convention bounce. But this is just day 1, maybe they can still recover.

Hmmm.  Maybe I'm totally crazy, but I would interpret it as a bad, bad sign for a political party that having to cancel bits of its convention due to a hurricane was considered a possible plus.

Just sayin'.

Cancelling a convention, throwing the whole affair into chaos, is a potential plus?

This convention is turning out to be all about Gustav and Palin, virtually nothing about Obama.

Is this what the GOP wanted?

St. Paul is like Spike Jones and his orchestra, a madcap mishmash - without the laughs. Although there is a dark comedy to it all: Hunter Thompson would have loved this.

Convention bounce? This may be the first convention crater.

Yesterday I argued that Obama dodged a bullet with Gustav, since a more serious crisis would have primed