Next week, the Republican National Convention will gather in Tampa Bay to formally nominate Mitt Romney for President and Paul Ryan as Vice President.  In spite of hurricane Isaac, I’ll be there with KSL News Radio as their “Star Correspondent” for the week. We’ll be there to report back to Utah on the convention, to make sure you hear about what is happening, even if it doesn’t make the prime time broadcast.

You can follow the convention here, on KSL.com, and on my Twitter feed @publiusdb . We’ll post as it happens.

Here’s just a brief list of a few of the things I’ll be looking for at the convention:

• Politicians, lots of them. Nothing brings together so many big names in politics quite like the conventions. The speaking schedule is a who’s who list of the luminaries in the Republican Party with stars like Sen. Marco Rubio, who will introduce Mitt Romney on Thursday night, libertarian and Tea Party favorite Sen. Paul Rand, Governor Nikki Haley, and even our own Mayor Mia Love, the Utah Republican Party challenger to Jim Matheson.
• Meet Mitt Romney. We’ve already started to see some of the themes of the fall election coalesce. For the most part, though, people haven’t paid as much attention as they will starting this week.  With prime time broadcasts on the three major networks Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, this will be the Republican Party’s opportunity to frame the debate and to introduce Romney (and Ryan) on their terms. The word on the street is that we’ll also be hearing more about Mitt Romney’s faith, something he has shied away from addressing very much to date.
• Meet delegates. With an estimated 50,000 people coming, there will be Republicans of all flavors and persuasions. I know Democrats love to portray the right as monolithic, but it’s a big-tent party and there are a lot of collected interests on the right. I look forward to meeting as many of them as possible and learning about how they think. I’m especially interested in what they think about Mitt Romney. Contrary to popular belief, delegates are political hacks…at least not all of them. Many will be ordinary people who have put the effort into getting elected a delegate and have the cash to get to Tampa Bay.
• 

  Paul Ryan, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  Our next Vice President. When Doug Wright asked me on his show who I most wanted to meet at the Republican Convention, I didn’t hesitate: Paul Ryan, and this before he was selected as Mitt’s running mate. I suspect he’ll be a little harder to approach to get a photo, but he’s still the top of my list, for obvious reasons. America, though, doesn’t know as much about him, and we’ll want to find out why Romney thought he would complete the ticket.

• Future leaders. Conventions are famous for bringing to the spotlight previously low profile politicians. Think Barack Obama in 2004. I’m wonder if we’ll see any break out speeches during the convention, and if we do, who will be giving them. While the main businesses of the convention is to help elect the next president, it’s a national stage for an ambitious politician with future national aspirations.

What do you want to see come out of the Republican National Convention? Are you going?

Related articles

• Priebus: GOP platform ‘not the platform of Mitt Romney’ (firstread.nbcnews.com)
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• Republicans say they’ll nominate Romney, despite potential storm (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Announces Six Republican Convention Headliners (longhairedpoet.com)
• The Republican National Convention: what could possibly go wrong? | Oliver Burkeman (guardian.co.uk)