Republican National Convention Schedule, Day 1: No we can't

Welcome to our coverage of the four-day-long Republican National Convention. Each morning, we'll be putting up a schedule highlighting the day's planned events. Let's get right to the action:

• The first day of the Republican National Convention has been cancelled due to weather.

The theme of today's events was to be We can do better. The theme will instead be revised to We probably could do better, but we don't feel like it, or We can do better unless it's raining outside, or We had planned to do better, but if Mitt gets wet he'll rust up like you wouldn't believe.

Today's speakers were originally to include Ann Romney, but after hearing the networks were not planning to televise it, the convention planners decided that would be pointless and have been attempting to shuffle her into a better slot ever since. She is currently expected to speak either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday evenings, almost certainly bumping one of the precious few ethnic-sounding names from the roster. (First they publicly pondered bumping home state senator Marco Rubio; when that did not go over well new reports surfaced naming New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez as the likely victim. So let's just say there's a pattern, here.)

Today was also going to feature the traditional roll call, upon which each state delegation either casts their votes for Mitt Romney or makes some sort of scene featuring frequent mention of the name "Ron Paul" and something about silver dimes. That's gone, to be replaced by something something something. The new Republican platform was also to be adopted today, but there was never much of a plan to highlight it because of the rampant, officially-sanctioned crazy contained therein.

All in all, the cancellation of the first day of the convention is actually a bit of a lucky break for the Republicans. The new, truncated schedule will provide opportunity to politely cancel the speeches of some prominent but embarrassing Republicans (the Todd Akin-supporting Mike Huckabee, for example.) There is new opportunity to shuffle Ann Romney into some other spot without so egregiously offending anyone, although Republicans will still probably manage to offend someone. And the delegates, who already bought their plane tickets and reserved their hotel rooms, get a free day to wander around during a tropical storm and/or visit some of the many fine erotic establishments that have been eagerly awaiting them.