Condoleezza Rice and John McCain to Speak at Republican Convention

Saul Loeb/A.F.P. – Getty Images; Frederic J. Brown/ A.F.P – Getty Images; Logan Mock-Bunting for The New York TimesCondoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez and Nikki Haley are among the speakers scheduled for the Republican National Convention.

Republicans plan to highlight three high-profile women as “headliners” during the national convention in Tampa later this summer, officials said this weekend.

Gov. Nikki Haley of of South Carolina, Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state under George W. Bush, will each have prominent speaking roles.

“They are some of our party’s brightest stars, who have governed and led effectively and admirably in their respective roles,” Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement. “Ours will be a world-class convention, worthy of the next president of the United States.”

Republican officials did not name the convention’s keynote speaker, a coveted spot that is often used to highlight a rising political star. Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, has been mentioned as a possible candidate.

The Democrats announced last week that Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, will be the keynote speaker at their national convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Republican convention officials did not indicate any role for the people most often mentioned as possible vice presidential nominees: Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, or Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota.

But the speakers’ list also includes a series of politicians whose speeches could help fire up the convention crowd ahead of Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s nominee in 2008, will get a speaking slot, as will Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. Both men were rivals of Mr. Romney’s in the 2008 primary.

Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, will get a headliner slot, as will John Kasich, the governor of Ohio.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

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GOP books Hard Rock hotel-casino for RNC convention week

According to a Tampa Tribune report, someone within the GOP has booked the entire, 250-room Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa for the duration of next month's RNC convention.

The hotel wasn't on the list of hotels reserved back in May through the party's official booking arm. But hotel-casino officials confirmed to the Tribune that someone linked to the GOP booked the property, which - following a $75 million expansion - now contains the world's fifth-largest casino. The Tribune tells us:

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"Casino executives confirm that someone within the Republican Party organization has made an unofficial reservation for not just a few rooms, but the entire 250-room hotel at the heart of the casino for Florida Republicans — for the entire week of the convention."

Who'll get to stay at the Hard Rock?

It's not clear who booked the hotel or who they booked it for, the story says. Spokesmen for both the RNC Committee on Arrangements, which booked about 150,000 area rooms for the convention in May, and the Tampa Bay Host Committee told the Tribune that they didn't make the reservation.

"Speculation is that it's being reserved for corporate high rollers, big donors or high-level GOP elected officials," the article says.

What is clear is that the booking's an expensive one.

Based on $129 per night room rates for August - a rate quoted by the hotel before demand increases due to the citywide convention - the five-day convention booking for all 250 rooms would cost $161,250 in rate alone, excluding food and beverage and other incidentals, the Tribune reports.

The hotel-casino just completed a $75 million expansion and renovation that makes it the world's sixth-largest casino, based on gaming positions or number of seats at a table or slot.

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To Prepare for Convention, Tampa Restricts Protests

But this time around, the protesters planning to gather in Tampa the last week in August hope their ranks will be swelled by the Occupy movement, whose members have said that they see the party’s expected nominee, Mitt Romney, as the embodiment of a financial system that favors the rich and corporations over ordinary citizens.

Now, in an effort to control demonstrations and prevent disturbances, officials in Tampa are taking unusual steps that they say will help ensure public safety but that many demonstrators and civil liberties advocates say will place unacceptable limits on public dissent.

In May the city adopted a temporary ordinance that will clamp down on protests in dozens of blocks near the Tampa Convention Center. Among other things, the ordinance requires a permit for groups of 50 or more to gather in parks; sets a limit of 90 minutes on parades; and bans an array of items, including glass bottles, aerosol cans and pieces of rope longer than six feet. It also provided for an official parade route for protesters along with viewing areas.

During public debates, some Tampa residents and City Council members opposed the rules, calling them excessive. Others complained that while the ordinance outlawed water pistols, actual pistols were allowed for those with permits to carry a concealed weapon. Although Tampa’s mayor, Bob Buckhorn, had asked the state’s governor, Rick Scott, to ban firearms during the convention, the governor has refused.

Mr. Buckhorn said the city did its best to accommodate varying interests in coming up with the rules.

“This balances the concerns of the vast majority of people coming here to protest peacefully,” he said recently, while “providing for a reasonable expectation of safety for the delegates and the convention guests.”

But protest organizers strongly disagree. Members of a protest group called resistRNC say they will avoid the official parade route and viewing areas. Amos Miers, 35, a spokesman for the group, said members preferred to pick their own spots to assemble and march.

“We were born with the right to move freely from place to place and speak our minds,” Mr. Miers said.

Weighing security concerns and First Amendment rights has become a quadrennial issue in cities hosting national political conventions. While both major parties’ conventions have become targets of protests, the Republican gatherings have involved larger demonstrations and resulted in numerous lawsuits by people who have said that they were wrongly arrested.

Mr. Buckhorn said that in devising the rules, officials in Tampa have studied previous conventions and economic summit meetings that have drawn protesters.  The Tampa police have said that they expect the majority of protesters to be law abiding, but that a certain number will most likely be bent on disruption and may engage in vandalism or violence.

Protesters, on the other hand, said that officials may be using the specter of disorder to justify heavy-handed tactics. They added that over the last few years the authorities in cities where large protests took place have appeared to follow a script that includes pre-emptive detainment, indiscriminate mass arrests and infiltration of protest groups.

The resistRNC Web site includes a “Notice to Law Enforcement Spying on Us,” which states that the group is not planning violent actions. The site’s creators also said that people who identify an informant may receive an award that they have named after Brandon Darby, a man from Texas who worked secretly for the F.B.I. while organizing a group to travel to the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

The police may also absorb lessons from the 2008 convention in St. Paul. On the first day of the convention there, large crowds of masked youths smashed bank windows while the authorities appeared to be taken by surprise. Later, officers used plastic bullets and tear gas, sometimes targeting onlookers, journalists and protesters who appeared to have done nothing wrong.

James H. Shimberg Jr., the city lawyer for Tampa, said that the police department there has trained officers in how to monitor protests effectively while respecting the rights of participants.

“Our goal is not to arrest anybody,” he said. “But if there are troublemakers out there they will not be tolerated.”

As the convention approaches, both the police and protesters are preparing.

The Tampa government has paid $57,000 to sublease a lot, which will be open to protesters 24 hours a day, a few hundred feet from the convention center. About half of a $50 million federal security grant has been allocated to pay 1,000 local officers and 3,000 officers from other cities to police the protests. The city has also bought gas masks for officers and installed security cameras in downtown Tampa.

At the same time, the National Lawyers Guild is assembling a legal support team of volunteer lawyers from Florida to represent protesters. Members of Occupy groups from around the country are planning caravans to Tampa. And the Rev. Bruce Wright, of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, said that he was arranging for an encampment called Romneyville to be set up on private property, where he said the city’s rules will not apply.

“We are looking at it as kind of a refuge,” Mr. Wright said of the camp, adding that on the first day of the convention it will be used as a staging ground for a march meant to highlight the problems of poverty, unemployment and homelessness.

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No Nomination, but Paul Predicts Strong Contingent at G.O.P. Convention

Representative Ron Paul may be the most libertarian of the Republicans who ran in the 2012 primaries, but he is encouraging his supporters with delegate estimates that veer toward liberal.

In a statement late last night, Mr. Paul suggested that, either officially or in spirit, his backers would represent “just over 20 percent” of the delegates at the Republican National Convention in August.

“And while this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!” he said.

“We stand to send nearly 200 bound delegates” to Tampa, Fla., Mr. Paul said, a number that “shatters the predictions of the pundits.” According to The Associated Press, Mr. Paul currently has 137 bound delegates, behind Newt Gingrich. There are still 261 delegates up for grabs: 40 delegates in Utah’s June 26 primary and 43 “super delegates,” with the balance coming from states that have held nominating contests but will not assign all their delegates until local and state conventions. Though Mr. Paul announced last month that he would not actively campaign, his highly organized supporters have successfully racked up delegates in states that Mr. Paul did not win. (For example, though Mr. Paul came in a distant second in Minnesota’s nonbinding caucuses, he has 30 delegates from the state. Rick Santorum, who won, and Mitt Romney both have three.)

A weekend dispute between Paul supporters and other Republican officials at Louisiana’s convention resulted in an arrest.

Mr. Paul also said his campaign would send “several hundred” people who are bound Romney delegates but nonetheless back Mr. Paul’s ideas, resulting in “nearly 500 supporters” on the convention floor — a figure impossible to verify.

“We have never had this kind of opportunity,” he said. “There will be hundreds of your fellow supporters in Tampa who will be ready and willing to push the Republican Party back to its limited government, liberty roots.” Mr. Paul also cautioned his followers to “be respectful.”

Meanwhile, Paul supporters who are trying to plan a multiday festival in his honor in Tampa just days before the official convention are accusing Republican officials of blocking approval for their venues.

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GOP Convention Ousts Obama Impersonator for Racial Jokes (The Atlantic Wire)

The talk of Saturday's Republican Leadership conference was comedian and professional Obama impersonator Reggie Brown, who was hired to perform his occasionally spot-on caricature of the President. After a slew of questionably appropriate, race-related jokes about Obama, not to mention heavy jabs at GOP candidates, Brown was asked to leave the stage before he could get to Michele Bachmann, the New York Times reports. Video of his act (including the loud music that cuts him off and his escort off stage) is below.

Related: First Republican Primary Debate Postponed

The term being widely used to describe Brown's jokes about Obama is "racially-tinged," so the general consensus is not that they were racist, per se, but they made the "nearly entirely white" audience more than a little uncomfortable. These are some examples of his "racially-tinged" jokes:

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"I took a vacation in my birth state, Hawaii, or as the Tea Partiers like to call it, Kenya.”"My favorite month is February, Back History Month. See Michele, she celebrates the whole month. I only celebrate half.""My mother loved a black man, and no, she was not a Kardashian."Brown flashed a picture on the screen of Fred Sanford from “Sanford and Son,” saying that's what Obama would look like when he got older.According to the Times, the audience watched "with befuddlement." But up through the off-color Obama jokes, laughter was often uproarious, based on the video below. And of course, no one seemed to mind any Rep. Weiner jokes, though laughter was a little subdued when he flashed the gray boxer picture that the audience had likely seen already in countless comedy acts. The laughter only really died down when Brown turned his attention to members of the GOP. No one laughed at his crying Boehner impression. He was met with boos when he called Newt Gingrich's campaign "frail, and barely clinging to life."

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The crowd seemed downright angry when he referenced Mitt Romney's Mormon faith by showing a picture of him standing next to multiple wives. He went on to mock Tim Pawlenty's performance during the recent GOP debate by saying that Pawlenty missed the event because he was “having his foot surgically removed from his mouth” and added, “Don’t worry. It’s covered under Obamneycare. Along with spinal transplants.” But he really seemed to cross the line when he said “[CNN’s] John King served him up a ball softer than Barney Frank’s backside.” (Frank is a gay member of Congress from Massachusetts.)

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"Now we got Michele Bachmann," he began. Music began to play. According to the Washington Post, RLC President and CEO Charlie Davis made the decision to pull him offstage, and a man came onstage to physically escort Brown off. “I just thought he had gone too far," Davis said. "He was funny the first 10 or 15 minutes, but it was inappropriate, it was getting ridiculous.”

Related: Bachmann Moderates Her Fiery Rhetoric in Iowa

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