GOP resumes business of convention
Officially nominating John McCain and Sarah Palin is priority No. 1 at the Republican National Convention. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Fred Thompson also are scheduled to speak tonight.
ST. PAUL -- The Republican National Convention gets back to business tonight as delegates hear from President Bush via satellite from the White House, as well as Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman and Fred Thompson, the former Republican senator from Tennessee.
After a one-day pause for the landfall of Hurricane Gustav, now classified as a tropical depression, party regulars are eager to resume the business of the convention: officially nominating Arizona Sen. John McCain as their candidate for president and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Television network anchors Brian Williams of NBC, Katie Couric of CBS, Charlie Gibson of ABC, as well as CNN's Anderson Cooper and Fox News' Shepard Smith are reported to be leaving the Gulf Coast this morning to cover the convention in Minnesota.
Convention planners, scrambling to shoehorn some of Monday's planned speakers into Tuesday's line-up, have designed this evening's program to showcase McCain's record as an independent-minded maverick who can appeal across party lines.
"It's going to be a lot about John McCain, who is John McCain," Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said.
Lieberman, who was the Democrats' vice presidential candidate in 2000, became an Independent after he was defeated in the Democratic primary in 2006. He caucuses with Democrats -- who reward him with chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee -- but has traveled around the country and the world supporting McCain for resident.
"I'm not going to spend any time tonight attacking Sen. [Barack] Obama," Lieberman said this morning on CNN. "I'm going to talk really to people in the hall but I hope to Independents and Democrat out across American about why I, as an Independent Democrat, am voting for John McCain and hope they will too."
And Thompson, the "Law and Order" star, said on Fox News that he will focus on McCain's biography.
"John McCain, the story of John McCain -- back during his military days, his younger days, and his days as a leader in Congress and elsewhere," he said. "In the United States Senate he's stood strong for what he believed in against Democrats and Republicans. He's been right on some very, very crucial issues when others around him and public opinion and so forth was on the other side." Thompson added, "He's just a remarkable story of patriotism, courage, and leadership, which his entire life personifies."
