Spokane County Republicans gather for their biennial convention Saturday with the presidential nomination already settled.

That doesn't mean they've got nothing to do at the Lewis and Clark High School Field House. There's a platform to adopt, delegates to the state convention to elect. Speeches to listen to.

Gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi gets about 15 minutes right at the 9 a.m. start as the keynote speaker, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers will get about five minutes, county chairman Curt Fackler said. After that, candidates are going to be on a shorter time line.

(That's the plan. We'll see how it works in practice.)

Platform discussions could be interesting because the delegates are going to be split -- no one knows on what ratio -- between the John McCain folks and the Ron Paul folks.

---

---