The Republican National Convention: McCain, Bob Dole and Larry Craig

McCain's VP surprise?

McCain won't be lonely-- after all, Bob Dole, the Republican he is most frequently compared too, will be there-- but he must be wondering why so many Republican elected officials are loudly declaring to media in their home states that they are too busy to bother showing up for his nomination in St Paul next month. Today vulnerable Republican rubber stamp Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), confirmed that she can't make it. She's busy. At the same time, Tom Cole (R-OK), chairman of the NRCC warned Republican candidates to stay away from what, if McCain's vicious, negative ad campaign is any indication, is bound to be seen as a controversial Hate Fest.

The NRCC chief discouraged candidates from attending the national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, saying that spending days there would be a “waste of time,” and they would be better off campaigning.

McCain's outlandish, desperation politics:



But even if no one else wants to get anywhere near a "dishonest, disreputable and dishonorable" character like John McCain, there's nothing they can do to prevent the always frisky Idaho Senator Larry Craig from showing up-- something about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime. Maybe that isn't fair. After all, his favorite type of arguments, the oral ones, will take place in Minneapolis just after the GOP Hate Fest wraps up. A three-judge panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals will consider Craig's appeal of his attempt to withdraw his guilty plea after being caught soliciting a handsome young undercover copy in a public toilet, something he is notorious for doing in Washington, DC's Union Station.