GOP curtails convention agenda

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (CNN) - Republicans suspended most of the opening-day agenda at their national presidential convention as Hurricane Gustav neared the Gulf Coast, Sen. John McCain, the party's nominee-in-waiting, announced Sunday.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney canceled their planned Monday speeches at the event, where McCain will formally be awarded the GOP presidential nomination.

"This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans. We have to join the 300 million other Americans on behalf of our fellow citizens. It's a time for action. So, we're going to suspend most of our activities tomorrow except for those absolutely necessary," McCain, of Arizona, said in an announcement broadcast from St. Louis, Missouri.

Mike Duncan, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the convention still must be called to order and necessary committees must report to get the nomination process moving.

"We will adopt our rules that allow us to go forward and allow us to go forward in the future. We will elect our officers of the convention, and we will adopt our party platform," Duncan said. "Those are essentials for us to be able to constitute before we can nominate the president and vice president. That's the action that will occur tomorrow."

McCain's top campaign aide, Rick Davis, said Monday's program would be "business only."

"We'll refrain from any political rhetoric that would be traditional in an opening session of a convention," he said.

Other "significant" requirements are that the nominations of McCain for president and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for vice president will take place. But Davis said the campaign has offered to fly Gulf Coast delegates back to the region and that some will be returning with family members. He said Republican financial officials are working with delegations to raise money for charities that operate in the Gulf Coast region.

"We hope and pray conditions in the Gulf don't deteriorate," he said.

The Bush administration received widespread criticism for its response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people in Mississippi and Louisiana when it struck on August 29, 2005. Bush himself was criticized for attending political events - including a brief stop to mark McCain's birthday - after the storm left most of New Orleans under water.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, a former Democratic presidential candidate, said the 2005 storm "symbolizes the failure of the Bush administration to respond to a major crisis in our country."

"If there was a lot of confidence that those in authority today would respond to this as they should have, then frankly, I think the convention would go on," Dodd told CNN. "There would be concerns about it, they would be talking about it, but they wouldn't be talking about canceling a convention."