Gustav is making waves for Republicans.

Sen. John McCain has called for the Republican Party to scale back its convention in Minneapolis , citing Hurricane Gustav’s potential to inflict “a great national disaster” on the people in the Gulf Coast region.

MoveOn.org targets McCain VP pick. The activist political group, which has an uncanny knack for getting on a Republican politician’s last nerve, has turned its sights on Sen. John McCain and his recently announced running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Saying that the American people “need to see” the facts about the new GOP veep, MoveOn.org has taken the Republican Party’s biggest charge lodged against Sen. Barack Obama and turned it against Palin: an apparent lack of experience. The woman McCain has chosen to be “one heartbeat away from the presidency” is “a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of [ Wasilla , Alaska ] a town of 9,000 people.” The liberal-leaning political group, established in the aftermath of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, notes that Palin, who hopes to rein in some of the former Clinton-supporting women who aren’t too hip on Obama, is a staunch opponent of abortion, even in the case of rape and incest. It also points out that Palin was a strong supporter of Pat Buchanan, who has been publicly flogged on more than one occasion for racially insensitive comments. In other examples of extremism, MoveOn.org notes, Palin does not believe humans are responsible for climate change. “How closely did John McCain vet this choice?” the group asks on its Web site. “He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.” But what MoveOn.org doesn’t acknowledge is that the 44-year-old governor, the first woman ever to get a major-party nomination as vice president, helped create a new sub-cabinet group of advisers to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska . In late-July a state poll showed her with an 80-percent approval rating.