RNC Scrapped Hologram Ronald Reagan Over Concerns It Would 'Overshadow' Romney's Speech

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For those of you who were hoping to see a hologram Ronald Reagan this year at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, here's the good news: it exists. There was some speculation that the conservative hero would be making an appearance at the convention, but many wrote it off as hearsay. As it turns out, it was true.

Similar to the surprise Tupac hologram that stole the show at this year's Coachella music festival, a hologram of Reagan was initially scheduled to make an appearance outside of the GOP convention this week. However, RNC officials requested that the creators of the digital Reagan to delay the presentation because it may "overshadow" Mitt Romney's acceptance speech on Thursday, Yahoo News reports.

"It wasn't officially going to be part of the convention," Tony Reynolds, one of the creators, told Yahoo News. "It was going to be outside of the convention at the Lakeland Center."

Reynolds said he plans on using the Reagan hologram to promote the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS) and has obtained the rights to a Reagan speech talking about small businesses. To craft this plan, he has been collaborating with AV Concepts, one of the companies that made Tupac Shakur come to life at Coachella.

But those plans were shot down when Reynolds says  a number of Republican activists asked him to delay the project out of concern it would "overshadow" Romney’s acceptance speech.

"At the time he hadn't chosen Paul Ryan, so I think they were a little worried about his energy," Reynolds said. "Even in a hologram form I think Reagan's going to beat a lot of people in terms of communicating."

But Reynolds said the Reagan unveiling was also due to the fact that he didn't want the prized hologram to be used in a partisan way, which would be hard to do at the Republican National Convention.

"We were careful because the JOBS Act was a bipartisan bill and we didn’t want to seem like we were favoring Republicans," he added.

The Reagan hologram will be debuted either later this year or early 2013, so you'll have to wait until then.