Tropical storm Isaac clearly a Democrat

A woman jogs along Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, Fla., Monday, Aug. 27, 2012. The Republican National Convention was delayed because of the approaching tropical storm Isaac. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

Tropical storm Isaac is hardly the opening splash that Republican National Convention planners hoped for. With program delays and Isaac’s threat of a destructive landfall tempering Republican celebrations, some are saying this storm is politically motivated.

“Tropical storm Isaac, totally a Democrat,” says Ross and Burbank fill-in host Andrew Walsh.

Republican National Convention organizers were concerned that Tampa, hosting thousands of GOP delegates, would get sideswiped by the storm; and that it would be unseemly to engage in days of political celebration if Isaac made a destructive landfall anywhere on U.S. soil.

Official convention events were delayed until Tuesday as a result of the storm. But it appears the worst of the storm is missing the area.

Paul Constant, a writer for Seattle’s Stranger newsweekly, tells Ross and Burbank as of 10 a.m. Monday the weather in Tampa “is nothing to write home about.”

“It’s not bad at all,” says Constant. “It’s been raining off and on.”

The apparently unwarranted delay of the convention due the storm’s original forecast is leading some to shout conspiracy. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is drawing a line between the National Hurricane Center and the Obama administration.

“Got a hurricane coming, the National Hurricane Center, which is a government agency, very hopeful that the hurricane gets near Tampa. The National Hurricane Center is Obama. It’s the National Weather Service, part of the Commerce Department, it’s Obama,” Limbaugh says.

“Conceivably, you could argue that since the administration runs all the agencies under the president that he could have issued secret orders for NOAA to create a wider hurricane track than necessary to encompass Tampa and scare the Republicans off,” says host Dave Ross, who continues saying he doesn’t think NOAA changed the hurricane route just to impact the convention.

Weather was recognized as potential trouble when Republicans chose to hold their convention in politically vital Florida during hurricane season, a decision reportedly made well before Romney locked up the nomination.

Forecasters say it has been difficult to forecast the storm’s path. The U.S. National Hurricane Center’s forecast map shows that it could hit somewhere along a roughly 300-mile stretch of Gulf Coast across four states from southern Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. Those areas are under hurricane warnings.

Hurricane center forecasters are uncertain of the storm’s path because two of their best computer models have tracked the storm on opposite sides of a broad cone for much of Sunday. One model has Isaac going well west and the other well east.

Isaac is expected to make landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Listen: Andrew has another idea about Obama-Isaac connection:

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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