Southfield (WWJ) -- Republicans say Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman will speak on Tuesday at the Republican National Convention.
Convention organizers and John McCain's campaign adjusted the schedule of the four-day gathering with Hurricane Gustav bearing down on the Gulf Coast. The storm now has weakened. That means Republicans will resurrect their program with some changes.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had been scheduled to give the keynote address. But Thompson and Lieberman will take the podium instead. Republicans say the two will talk about McCain's biography and their friendship with him.
Just hours before the Republican political festival opened in the Minnesota capital Monday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. It also was revealed Monday that an attorney had been hired to represent Palin in a state ethics probe and that her husband, Todd, had been arrested for drunken driving two decades ago.
McCain senior adviser Nicolle Wallace told CBS' The Early Show Tuesday that the candidate knew about the pregnancy and within the campaign "this did not give anyone any pause."
The man who led McCain's vice presidential search team said he thought everything that had come up as a possible red flag during the background check had now been made public.
"I think so," Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. told The Associated Press. "Yes. I think so. Correct."
Hurricane Gustav, which pounded ashore 1,000 miles to the south, provided some distraction from the news surrounding Palin. Yet initial reports showed the storm was not as devastating as feared, and attention quickly returned to the 44-year-old mother of five, known as a maverick who has routinely challenged the Alaska state political machinery.
Gustav, while reminding Americans of how the administration of President George W. Bush bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago, gave McCain's Republicans a chance to show they could do better this time as they pushed hard to strengthen the relief effort.
Convention organizers stripped out pageantry normally attached to the opening day of a political convention, and Republicans scaled back attacks on Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
Instead, first lady Laura Bush and her would-be successor, Cindy McCain, provided the day's star power, appealing for delegates to open their wallets to help those caught in Gustav's path.
WWJ's Vickie Thomas is in St. Paul. Listen for her live reports throughout the week.
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