Will curtailing their convention hurt, help or have no effect on the Republican ticket?

I think it will give them more time to do damage control and prepare responses to the reaction to McCain’s VP choice.

In the long run it won’t matter one bit. The GOP is going down.

I hope that it hurts like heck!

I don’t think the pure fact of the Convention being shorter will have much of an effect. Most of the interest will be on McCain’s acceptance speech (and also on Governor Palin’s speech) and that event will still be on Thursday at the same time. In the end, I think it will just show that, perhaps, we don’t really need four-day long conventions anymore.

Addendum: I should mention that I didn’t think the convention would help Senator McCain very much had it been uninterrupted and I still think it will not help him much.

Lots of wild stories floating around the net about Palin, her last child and her pregnant, unmarried 17-yr-old daughter. Plenty of distraction w/o the convention.

@Gail, I was just thinking about posting a question regarding that very story. I am curious to hear Fluther’s take on that situation.

I think that if anything, the shortening of the convention will hurt McCain by removing the spotlight from the shindig. I am just waiting for Fox News to start saying that Obama’s camp hired an evil, weather manipulating genius, to cause hurricane Gustav and distract Americans from the goings on in the Twin Cities.

I could care less about either convention, to tell the truth. I didn’t bother with the Democratic one, and I won’t bother with the Republican one either.

I don’t think so. I think it just gives them more time to do damage control, even though I’m firm on the belief that Palin’s daughter should be hands off.

They won’t be on until Thursday and that is what people really want to see, McCain and Palin.

I think it won’t have any effect. Let’s be real, not many people (including the press) are actually interested in watching the Republican convention. 4 days is just too much to bear with. As others have said, the only speeches people want to see is from Palin and McCain themselves, which is still taking place as scheduled.

two, four, six, eight – why don’t we just SPECULATE!

Ask anyone who follows polls and they’ll tell you the same thing. There is a “convention bounce”, but that effect is temporary. Clearly they think that by showing “compassion” and turning their convention into an “altruistic” call to service it is going to more than make up for what they lose by compressing the convention, and that may well be the case. A convention is after all nothing more than a 4 day commercial, and hey, a 3 day commercial where you demonstrate self sacrifice is probably just about as good. The big “danger” is that they have to retool their message, which gives them a bit less time to present a coherent and unified front, which is the cornerstone of the Republican strategy. . But they’re pretty good at towing the party line…even though we KNOW that if the Democrats had picked a candidate like Palin (1.5 years as governor of the 3rd least populous state, a state with a population smaller than 40% of the counties in the US), the same people who are now pushing the “commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard line) would have been scoffing at how Obama could have POSSIBLY found someone with even less experience than HE has.

So, the VP candidate who is a strong proponent of abstinence only based sex education having a 17 year old daughter who is 5 months pregnant, which would be a HUGE scandal if it were a Democrat in the same position, is an example of how steadfast she is in her values…they’re getting married and keeping the baby after all! Essentially the convention is a wholly partisan affair…about the only time the parties can really let it all hang out and say for the most part what they really think about the other party, which is what the partisans are hungry for, there are a small number of independents who will look to the conventions and who will be swayed by whomever puts forth the most persuasive argument (which doesn’t necessarily mean the argument that makes the most sense or adheres the best to the truth and logic). So, yes, the convention, even if it’s one day long instead of 4 will by virtue of the fact that the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates get to put forth their arguments to the American people in a setting where any dissent is essentially drowned out due to lack of interest in anything but the big show on the part of the media.

But as I said in my first paragraph, no matter how much it moves the numbers, even if the message of self sacrifice to help our fellow man builds a temporary image of “they really care”, it won’t wipe out the damage done by the government’s response to Katrina and Rita in the long run, and no matter how successful the convention message is at moving the numbers, it’s a temporary, but still inevitable bounce. What you can expect is that the numbers, barring any more big surprises from either side, if we should have a week after the last day of the RNC where it’s just campaigning, any bounce from the conventions will have evened out, and you’ll really be able to see where the race actually is. I’d say until the conventions and the VP picks are stale news, it’s going to be hard to really understand what is going on, but say a week from Wednesday, we’ll start to know whether Palin was a good or bad answer to Biden and which convention was ultimately the more successful.

To be honest, I’d expect the race to revert to a dead heat about a week after the convention is over, and to stay that way until election day, at which point I think it will come down to Obama outperforming all expectations.

I must say, I did enjoy the huge, expensive stage show at the DNC. Haven’t seen theatrics like that since the U2 ZooTV tour.

Wonder how much it cost? I’m sure all the Katrina victims enjoyed it thoroughly.

@knot – when it started shooting fireworks in the end, i was reminded of the Bird’s nest.

@stratman37: I have a feeling that I know you from somewhere!

Marshall: I get that a lot. Maybe we met in Chi Town long ago.

@stratman37: I was raised in Chicago until the age of 7, when we moved to L.A.