Former senator and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole tells Inside the Tent contributor John Steward why this year’s White House race is different.

Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Steward is not a Reuters employee and any opinions expressed are his own.

Click here for a full list of contributors at the Republican National Convention.

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ST. PAUL - Faith-based community organizers have a message for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: they have “actual responsibilities” thank you very much.

In a pointed barb aimed at Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, John McCain’s running mate on the Republican ticket said her experiences as a small town mayor in Alaska were far more taxing than that of a community organizer.

Obama was a community organizer in Chicago two decades ago.

“A small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,” the Alaska governor told the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night in a rousing speech peppered with jabs at Obama.

“Contrary to Palin’s disparaging remarks, organizers have major responsibilities for creating policy changes. Feeding the hungry and housing the homeless are clearly responsibilities of people of faith. We do that by providing food and shelter and more importantly, by organizing to address the causes of injustice and inequity which lead to hunger and homelessness,” said Kim Bobo, Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a congregation-based community organization in Chicago.

Bobo was quoted in a statement issued by several faith-based community organizations that bristled at the remarks by Palin, who has revved up other people of faith — the conservative Christians who comprise the Republican Party’s key base.  

(Photo credit: REUTERS/Rick Wilking, Sept. 3, 2008, USA)

A standoff between rock fans and police led to 102 arrests Wednesday night when fired-up concertgoers took to the streets after a Rage Against the Machine show.

Several hundred fans of the band, whose songs include “Take the Power Back,” and “Bullet in the Head,” marched through downtown Minneapolis after the band finished its set at the Target Center arena.

The show ended at roughly the same time as the third night of the Republican convention across the Mississippi River in St. Paul. Fans of the politically radical band mixed with exuberant Republicans headed to exclusive parties where they toasted vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s speech.

As police in riot gear faced shirtless rock fans in the streets, Republicans looked on from the rooftop deck of the exclusive R. Norman’s steakhouse, where bigwigs like Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman pressed the flesh.

Many of those at the party were not impressed with the spectacle.

“They’ll claim police brutality, then sue and win and make enough money to come to the next convention,” one partygoer said.

“They can sit there all night because they don’t have jobs,” said another.

The protesters didn’t sit there all night, in fact. Police arrested 102  after they occupied an intersection and refused to leave, said Bill Palmer of the Joint Information Center.

Most were ticketed for presence at an unlawful assembly, but two were booked on assault and obstruction of legal process, Palmer said.

UPDATED 

ST. PAUL - Carly Fiorina and other women supporters of Sen. John McCain blasted “the media” for what they called sexist coverage of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and denied that the Republican party had inflicted its own sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton.

“The Republican Party  will not stand by while Sarah Palin is subjected to sexist attacks,” Fiorina said.

She singled out a column by The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd that referred to Republicans’ “tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West” as a glaring example of gender stereotyping.

When asked what was sexist about examining Palin’s experience or judgment, Fiorina said she objected to the media “trying to portray her as a show horse, not a work horse.”

She also denied that Hillary Clinton had been subjected to sexist attacks by Republicans, drawing a few sarcastic chuckles from the audience.

Fiorina said she had stepped up to defend Clinton by going on television to express her outrage over sexism.

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn thought the media was to blame for Republicans not doing more to support Clinton, arguing that, “Had we been more vocal, you all would have chosen not to report it.”

UPDATE:

However, not everyone in the McCain camp appeared to be on the same page. When asked on Fox News whether there was any sexism in the reaction to Palin, Meg Whitman, McCain’s national campaign co-chair, said, “I wouldn’t say there really has.” 
   
“I actually think it’s completely fair for the media to vet Sarah Palin, just as they did Barack Obama, and John McCain and everyone else who’s running for office,” she said. “I mean you are running for the second highest office in the land.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: REUTERS/Rick Wilking. Carly Fiorina speaks at a press briefing at the Republican National Convention, Sept. 3, 2008.

LIMA, Ohio - Democratic White House contender Barack Obama said on Sunday he would tap his e-mail list of volunteers and donors to help with the relief effort if Hurricane Gustav wreaks havoc on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there, if it becomes necessary,” Obama told reporters after attending a church service in Lima, Ohio. “We can activate an e-mail list of a couple million people who want to give back.”

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain flew to Mississippi to view the preparations for the storm. 

With the Republican convention scheduled to begin this week in St. Paul, Minnesota, President George W. Bush said he would not attend the that event and will instead address the assembly via satellite so he can oversee the federal response to Hurricane Gustav.

Obama said he was wary of visiting the Gulf Coast region right away because of the disruption his entourage of security officials might cause. 

But he declined to criticize McCain for his visit to Mississippi.

“I think that a big storm like this raises bipartisan concerns and I think for John to want to find out what is going on is fine,” Obama said, adding that he assumed McCain would steer clear of places where his entourage might get in the way.

The Bush administration was widely criticized as having botched the response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Obama, who spoke on Saturday with David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the agency seemed to be better positioned this time to grapple with the storm.

“Having said that, even if some of those lessons have been learned, it’s still very unpredictable what the course of the storm is going to be and what its magnitude is,” he added. 
     
  Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young.  Sen. Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally in Beaver, Pennsylvania,  Aug. 29, 2008    

Are you going to the Democratic convention in Denver or the Republican convention in St. Paul?

This year’s nominating conventions are poised to be some of the most exciting and newsworthy in decades. And because of new technology and online distribution, entire elections can now hinge on moments captured not by traditional journalists, but by ordinary citizens and those closest to the action.

Reuters is looking for participants in a new mobile journalism project that will capture this year’s conventions from the ground up. We will be equipping attendees with video cameras, and helping them to shoot footage from their own perspective and upload it to Reuters.com and other sites.

We hope to capture an unseen side of the conventions, from those most involved — delegates, donors, convention volunteers and others. Unfortunately we can’t provide passes into the conventions. But if you already have plans to attend, or know someone who does, email reutersmojo@gmail.com for more details.

Even if you’re not going to Denver or St. Paul, what kind of coverage would you like to see? What questions would you like on-the-scene reporters to ask? Leave your suggestions in the comments section.

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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Wednesday he’s likely to make another major speech at the Republican National Convention later this year, as he did in 2004, and that he’s going to join his buddy John McCain on the campaign trail later this year.

The governor spoke of his plans during a lunch session for participants at the Milken Institute Global Conference on the economy.

Schwarzenegger announced on Jan. 31 that he is supporting McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The governor noted that his wife, Maria Shriver,  is a lifelong Democrat who supports Barack Obama. 

Schwarzenegger told the conference that he likes the environmental stands of each of the three presidential candidates: McCain, Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton.  But said he sided with McCain because he knows him best and has a long working relationship with the Arizona senator.

On Tuesday night, the Milken audience was asked, by a show of applause, which of the three candidates they supported. It was a close call between McCain and Obama who the audience liked the most. Only a handful put their hands together for Clinton, who won the California primary over Obama handily earlier this year.

Because he was born outside the United States, the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger is not eligible to run for president. If he were, perhaps he would not have uttered the line on Wednesday that “Nobody is dying to go to Iowa,” the state that holds the first contest in the presidential nominating process and one where candidates are expected to spend alot of time wooing voters. Schwarzenegger said that when he was extoling the virtues of California.

Reporting by Bernie Woodall

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: Reuters/Phil McCarten (Schwarzenegger participates in a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif.)