ST. PAUL, Minn. — Even before the first gavel came down yesterday, the Republican National Convention may have shattered forever the stereotype of the buttoned-down, country-club affair minutely orchestrated for a national audience on prime-time TV.

For starters, there was no prime-time TV. The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, canceled last night’s program of speeches — including President Bush’s headliner — in deference to Hurricane Gustav’s threat to the Gulf Coast region.

Next, the delegates suddenly found themselves reacting to another subplot in this unscripted political drama — the news that vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s unmarried, 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

Then came a small but unsettling protest outside the convention hall, with window-breaking and other mayhem by a group of self-styled anarchists.

As first-time Rhode Island delegate Virginia Butterworth put it early in the day, “This is not the boring convention I expected. This is like Alice in Wonderland — curiouser and curiouser.”

Under the circumstances, the improvised proceedings at the Xcel Energy Center were remarkably orderly. The downtown hockey arena was filled to near capacity, the GOP platform was accepted without a hitch, and delegates adapted the convention’s purpose to — at least for its first day — a hurricane relief program with elements of an old-fashioned charity telethon.

By the time First Lady Laura Bush and Cindy McCain, the candidate’s wife, made their hastily organized appearance onstage to close the day, Rhode Island delegates were satisfied that the convention had accomplished some good under difficult circumstances.

“It’s been a subdued convention today,” state House Minority Leader Bob Watson, the chairman of the local delegation, said after the warm ovation for Bush and McCain, “but I think it’s important that we show a presence, that we show the flag and maybe raise some money and some assistance for the Gulf Coast — in a way that maybe we couldn’t have done if we had not been gathered here.”

Some of the Rhode Island delegation’s most conservative members were quick to say the news about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy calls for a tolerant response. Rhode Island delegate Kristine Greene suggested that many voters will react to the word of the pregnancy with understanding. Out-of-wedlock pregnancy “is not uncommon to the experience of many Americans,” said Greene, a first-time delegate from West Greenwich who describes herself as a conservative Christian.

Greene said her first reaction to the news was that it underlines the image of the Palins as “just an ordinary family, and they find themselves in circumstances that are not extraordinary in today’s world.”

The most important aspect about the news “is that she is still pregnant,” said Greene, meaning that Palin has chosen to have her baby.

“Social conservatives would recognize right away that we are all imperfect,” said Dave Hathaway, a delegate who supported former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee during the primary season and is running for state representative from Exeter.

Hathaway said the out-of-wedlock pregnancy in Governor Palin’s family reaffirmed his view that “she is real, she is living a real life, she is dealing with real issues. You sympathize with her and you take some comfort from the fact that she is dealing with an issue that every American family can relate to.”

State GOP chairman Giovanni Cicione seconded that proposition. His own extended family includes children born to two of his unmarried nieces. “If it were some sort of rarity in this nation, I think it might be more of a surprise,” Cicione said. “They are good kids and we love them,” Cicione said of the children born out of wedlock into his family — one of whom is his godchild.

Meanwhile, Cicione, a member of the platform committee, produced a freshly printed copy of the 2008 GOP platform, adopted by acclamation late yesterday afternoon, and pointed with pride to the bottom of page 23, where party tax policy is presented. “I wrote that passage,” he said of the final sentence:

“The Republican Party will put a stop to both social engineering and corporate handouts by simplifying tax policy, eliminating special deals, and putting those saved dollars back into the taxpayers’ pockets.”