So, as it happens, we're spinning a 7.7. As I tried an initial lorax run to build the installation environment, I ran into a lorax python script error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/lorax", line 428, in <module>
    main(sys.argv)
  File "/usr/sbin/lorax", line 164, in main
    optional.add_argument("-e", "--excludepkgs", default=[],
AttributeError: OptionGroup instance has no attribute 'add_argument'
0: ERROR: lorax failed. Exiting.

The code snippet is as follows:

...
    optional.add_option("-e", "--excludepkgs", default=[],
            action="append", metavar="STRING",
            help="package glob to exclude (may be listed multiple times)")
    optional.add_option("-i", "--installpkgs", default=[],
            action="append", metavar="STRING",
            help="package glob to install before runtime-install.tmpl runs. (may be listed multiple times)")
    optional.add_argument("-e", "--excludepkgs", default=[],
            action="append", metavar="PACKAGE",
            help="package glob to remove before runtime-install.tmpl runs. (may be listed multiple times)")
    optional.add_option("--buildarch", default=None,
            help="build architecture", metavar="STRING")
...

lorax-19.7.19-1 which I was using previously, has the -e option using using optional.add_option(). 

So, Pat, is there a lorax version that doesn't have that in that you used for 7.7, or am I missing a python2 update that adds the "add_argument" method?