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A line of people that stretched for five city blocks awaited Mr. Romney as his motorcade pulled into Union Terminal here.

And inside there were so many people that the campaign had to redirect a few hundred of them into a small overflow room, where they crammed in shoulder to shoulder.

Later, thousands in Jacksonville, Fla., filled a courtyard and gave Mr. Romney and his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, a spirited reception.

Mr. Romney has often failed to spark much of a connection with his audiences, and along the campaign trail enthusiasm has sometimes been in short supply.

But inside a soaring Art Deco-style rotunda here, the candidate, joined by John A. Boehner, the speaker of the House, and Senator Rob Portman, delivered a vigorous and sharply focused speech — complete with fresh punch lines — that sent the audience into earsplitting roars.

Echoing a criticism of the president that he has been making more powerfully lately, Mr. Romney denounced Mr. Obama’s first term as one of betrayed promises and failed leadership.

“One of the promises he made was he was going to create more jobs. And today, 23 million people are out of work or stopped looking for work or underemployed,” Mr. Romney said. “Let me tell you, if you have a coach that’s zero and 23 million, you say it’s time to get a new coach. It’s time for America to see a winning season again, and we’re going to bring it to them.”

Mr. Romney also confronted head-on a subject that he had been more reluctant to wade into: chastising Republicans for running up the deficit when they controlled Washington.

The more popular and convenient story line for many Republicans has often been to lay the blame for record deficits at the feet of the Obama administration.

“We’re going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time, and for a while we didn’t do it,” he said. “When we had the lead we let people down.”

As Mr. Romney roused the crowd here, Mr. Obama sought to drum up momentum for his convention, which begins Tuesday. He started a four-day, four-state campaign trip on Saturday in Iowa, the state where he opened his quest for the presidency five years ago. In front of a crowd of 10,000 outside Des Moines, he said the Republican convention was a reminder of how backward-looking their vision for the country is.

“You might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV,” said Mr. Obama, to the applause and amusement of his audience. He offered a summary, “Everything’s bad, it’s Obama’s fault and Governor Romney is going to be the one who knows the secret to creating jobs and growing the economy.”

“There was a lot of talk about hard truths and bold choices, but nobody ever actually bothered to tell you what they were,” Mr. Obama added. “And when Governor Romney had his chance to let you in on his secrets, he did not offer a single new idea — just retreads of the same old policies that have been sticking it to the middle class for years.”

It was Mr. Obama’s seventh visit to the state this year and his 13th as president, reflecting the importance of this swing state’s six electoral votes to his prospects of winning the necessary 270 votes in a close, unpredictable election.

On Monday, Mr. Obama will take a detour from campaigning to tour the storm damage in Louisiana, a solid Republican state, and then visit Virginia, a swing state, on Tuesday before arriving for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday.

Mr. Ryan also had a separate campaign stop of his own, visiting Ohio State University in the morning for the football team’s season opener. He joined tailgaters and flipped some burgers on a grill, a skill that his mother, Betty, noted he had acquired working at McDonald’s as a young man.

Since Mr. Romney picked Mr. Ryan as his running mate last month, the former Massachusetts governor has used his younger and spryer No. 2 to add some energy to campaign rallies. But the speech in Cincinnati nevertheless lit a fire in the audience while Mr. Ryan was in another part of the state.

The setting for Mr. Romney’s speech had been the backdrop for another major political event. On Oct. 7, 2002, George W. Bush delivered a televised address from Union Terminal to make his case for the Iraq war.

Mr. Romney’s speech hit some of the same notes that Mr. Romney made in Tampa, Fla., where he accepted his party’s nomination on Thursday night. He accused the president of putting teachers’ unions, not students, first. He said the president would raise taxes on successful small business owners. And he pledged to repeal the president’s health care overhaul, which he called a “big cloud” raining over small businesses.

“America’s going to come roaring back,” Mr. Romney said as he concluded. “We’re going to get America strong again, for you, for your children, for the future.”

The language in the speech, complete with sports team metaphors and the “roaring back” line recalled the message delivered by a Romney campaign supporter in a Super Bowl car commercial that stirred considerable controversy when it aired: That supporter was Clint Eastwood.

Jeremy W. Peters reported from Cincinnati, and Jackie Calmes from Urbandale, Iowa. Trip Gabriel contributed reporting from Columbus, Ohio.

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TAMPA -- Mitt Romney has held a consistent advantage over President Obama in positive sentiment expressed in tweets from 12 battleground states in the 10 days leading up to the Republican convention.

New Twitter analysis data produced by Topsy labs for the USA TODAY/Twitter Election Meter show that the addition of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to the GOP ticket Aug. 11 sent Romney's Twitter rating soaring. Though that bounce faded over a few days, Romney has maintained a small but conistent advantage over Obama in swing state tweets since Aug. 17, and his swing state scores have steadily improved before the Republican National Convention.

The Twitter scores are based on the Twitter Political Index, a daily number produced by Twitter in partnership with Topsy Labs and polling firms The Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research. The index provides a daily snapshot of the sentiment of political conversation on Twitter, gathering millions of tweets that mention Obama and Romney and measure the relative positivity or negativity of those conversations.

INTERACTIVE:  USA TODAY/ Twitter Election Meter

The index is based on a 0-100 scale; a score of 50 is considered neutral, about the same sentiment as average non-political conversations on Twitter. Below 50 is more negative, above 50 more positive than an average Twitter conversation. Twitter index scores for both Romney and Obama have tended to trend far below 50 for most of the summer.

Romney's swing state Twitter trend is more pronounced than his national Twitter sentiment trend. Though in both the national and the swing state numbers, he has outperformed Obama over the past week, the gap is a little larger in the swing state numbers. For example, on Aug. 24, Obama had a national index score of 23, and Romney's score was 28. In the swing state index for that day, Obama was at 19, and Romney's was 36.

Yesterday, Romney's swing state score was 41, Obama's was 27, and the national results were about the same, with Romney registering a score of 40 and Obama scoring 28.

The swing states in the sample are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The data for the states are aggregated and not available for the individual states.

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var archivedState=0; and Michael Kranish Globe Staff  / August 31, 2012

TAMPA — Condoleezza Rice radiated charisma, Ann Romney exuded warmth, and Paul Ryan brought his Wisconsin-bred polite pugnacity. But in the end, it was Mitt Romney who capped the Republicans’ big week with a message that carried an unlikely echo of the very president he is trying to unseat.

On the final night of a slimmed-down and at times uneven Republican National Convention, Romney used his long-awaited address to call for national unity and conciliation, to “restore the promise of America.” He used somewhat gentler rebukes of President Obama — more disappointed father than angry uncle — as he pleaded with his party and his country to transfer to him the mantle of hope and change.

It was a shrewd tack, and a more presidential one, performed with the recognition that many Americans are still just forming first impressions of a man who has remained, in the public imagination, something of a riddle.

“That America, that united America” became a refrain, as Romney called for shared purpose — toward putting people back to work, caring for the poor and the sick, and preserving US military strength. In spirit, at times, it evoked Obama’s legendary lament at the 2004 Democratic National Convention about the red state-blue state divide.

Despite the harsh attacks that he, his campaign, and their Republican surrogates have leveled against Obama’s presidency this week, Thursday night was Romney’s moment to rise above all that, to appear, at least for a brief moment, high-minded and more personable. Fleeting or not, it was an approach that surely held appeal well beyond the partisan confines of the Tampa convention hall, even if the speech lacked the soaring rhetoric or cogency of the week’s best performers.

Romney had two key challenges coming into the convention. He had to make voters confident in his ability to fix the economy, but also comfortable with him as a potential president. He has, though, been famously stingy in talking about himself. His campaign book, “No Apology,” is so spare on personal details that he began the first chapter with these words: “I hate to weed.”

Whether he accomplished all he needed to remains an open question. But one of the most important tasks of the past few days — fleshing out who Mitt Romney is, and where he comes from — he achieved to a degree Thursday by revealing some emotion in talking about his five boys and by letting friends and supporters speak to his character.

Party leaders and TV viewers heard uplifting (and selectively chosen) stories about companies helped by Bain Capital. They heard of the loyalty he inspires among those close to him. They heard of his managerial aplomb as governor. But most notably they heard testimonials about his long and committed service within the Mormon church.

In perhaps the moving moment of the convention, a former Massachusetts couple, Pat and Ted Oparowski, told a hushed audience how Romney, in his role as a lay church leader, had ministered to their family when their 14-year-old son, David, was dying of cancer. One day, David asked Romney, a Harvard Law School graduate, to help him make a will, something no teenager should ever have to do.

“How many men do you know would take the time out of their busy lives to visit a terminally ill 14-year-old and help him settle his affairs?” Pat Oparowski asked.

The inclusion of the Oparowskis, along with other Mormons, in the program was, as envisioned by the campaign, an adroit way of addressing the centrality of Romney’s Mormon faith without delving into specific tenets. It was a shift for a man who has been highly resistant to sharing much publicly about his religion and its place in his life. Romney’s unremarkable utterance Thursday about his upbringing — “We were Mormons” — was remarkable in that he said it at all.

With Republicans worried about turning off women voters, Romney also made a fairly explicit pitch for their support. He invoked his mother, Lenore, and her groundbreaking, though ultimately unsuccessful, 1970 campaign for US Senate in Michigan. He paid tribute to the lineup of women convention speakers. And he ticked off a tally of women he appointed to senior positions as governor.

Republicans now head into the final two months of the presidential campaign professing enthusiasm and optimism about their chances this November.

“This has been a tremendous convention,” former senator Mel Martinez of Florida said prior to Romney’s speech.

Still, Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, said Romney is unlikely to receive a sustainable polling bounce from the convention. Plus, any bump is likely to be countered by Obama’s gain from his own convention. Continued...

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TAMPA – Mitt Romney's long road to the Republican nomination came to a triumphant conclusion Tuesday with delegates at the party's convention formally selecting him to oppose President Obama on Nov 6.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus bangs the gavel for order as delegates' chants hold up a speech by Zori Fonalledas chairman, Committee on Permanent Organization.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus bangs the gavel for order as delegates' chants hold up a speech by Zori Fonalledas chairman, Committee on Permanent Organization.

Having pushed their convention back a day because of worries about then-Tropical Storm Isaac, the GOP began its program this afternoon, and the roll call of states took place within hours of the opening gavel.

But first, delegates emphatically approved a toughly worded party platform that would ban all abortions and gay marriages, reshape Medicare into a voucher-like program and reject federal spending as an antidote for the nation's ailing job market.

But there was also controversy, centered around Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the last holdout candidate in the failed effort to block Romney's nomination.

Paul appeared on the convention floor before the session began to shouts of "Ron Paul" and "Let him speak!"

That led, briefly, to a dueling chant of "Romney!"

Paul said this week that he declined a speaking slot because he was unwilling to "fully endorse" Romney as required. The schedule calls for a Paul video.

Later, many Paul supporters objected loudly to new GOP rules designed to discourage insurgent presidential candidates from amassing delegates.

Paul backers — believing they were being squeezed out — chanted "Object! Object!" Priebus declined to recognize them, saying at one point: "Guys, we will proceed with the order of business."

At least one delegate, John Burroughs, an engineer from Dallas, said he would not vote for Mitt Romney in November even if party rules bind him to voting to nominate him at the convention. "It doesn't bode well for the party. It's not just about Mitt Romney personally," he said, "It's an illusion that we have 100% unity."

The afternoon's events were the first real activity of the delayed convention. The party held a brief pro forma session Monday, canceling all that day's events out of concern over Isaac. The storm blew over — it is now a hurricane headed for Louisiana — and for now, at least, the convention is in full swing.

Tonight's headliners include a keynote address from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and speeches by Romney's wife, Ann; former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum; South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley; and ex-Democrat and former Alabama congressman Artur Davis.

Ann Romney will attempt to show delegates and millions of TV viewers a softer side of her husband, who has been hammered by Democrats for his ties to Bain Capital amid claims that some of the private-equity firm's investments resulted in layoffs.

The Romney camp did not say whether Romney the candidate would attend his wife's speech or show up at all before his address Thursday.

Christie is a populist favorite who ignored pleas to run for president this year. He told USA TODAY he plans to "tell some very direct and hard truths to people in the country about the trouble that we're in."

Since Christie defeated Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine in 2009, the former federal prosecutor has become a national political figure best known for his combative style and straight talk. His YouTube videos — calling a law student an "idiot" or telling people to "get the hell off the beach" as Hurricane Irene approached last summer — have contributed to his popularity.

More than one-third of Americans, or 34%, say they have a favorable impression of Christie, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. About a quarter of adults said they had an unfavorable opinion of Christie.

Santorum emerged as the conservative alternative to Romney during the GOP primaries. He fell short, but the former Pennsylvania senator gets to tell his story about being the son of immigrants and the fight in Congress during the mid-1990s to overhaul welfare.

Haley, speaking to USA TODAY, said she hopes her speech will appeal to women and help strengthen Romney's popularity in a group that heavily favors Obama in polling.

"I think Gov. Romney is right for the country," Haley said. "He needs to talk about what he has done. Show what he has done to run a successful business.

"The idea that governors need to be able to govern the states without federal intrusion is very important."

Four years ago, Davis was in Denver nominating Barack Obama for president. Now, Davis is a Republican supporting Romney, and he's got some strong things to say about the Democratic Party he left.

Other Republican stars made morning rounds, energizing the Romney delegate base before the day's proceedings.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio addressed a breakfast for delegates from his state, hitting themes of freedom and free enterprise, when his speech was disrupted by a handful of protesters who shouted that they represented working-class Floridians and demanded Rubio "pay his fair share."

The crowd of about 150 delegates and guests shouted them down before the protesters were led from the Innisbrook Golf Resort by law enforcement.

"Well, I guess he's not happy with the hotel assignment," Rubio said to laughter.

Romney senior adviser Ron Kaufman said at a breakfast sponsored by Politico that he wasn't worried about the abbreviated convention.

"I think we took four days, we put them into three, and you'll feel like they are four when it is all said and done. … I think people will walk away thinking, 'That was a good show.' "

Kaufman said that although Romney's grand-finale address will be important, it might not immediately endear him to Americans who remain on the fence about him.

"I don't think he grows that fast," he said. "I think it's part of the narrative."

Kaufman said there are three important events during the general election that will help define Romney: the vice presidential pick of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., his convention speech and the presidential debates.

"It won't change overnight," he said.

Contributing: Jackie Kucinich; Paul Flemming of the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat; Associated Press

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The Romneys and the Ryans have arrived in Tampa, starting the hard work of shifting a city’s focus from storm coverage to the job at hand -- anointing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as the Republican standard-bearers. 

And, weather-permitting, throwing one heck of a party. 

Romney's wife Ann, upon landing, immediately went to the convention site, the Tampa Bay Times Forum, for a walk-through ahead of her major speech Tuesday night. She did a quick sound-check, reading the opening of the Gettysburg Address from a teleprompter placed at the back of the room. 

On the flight to Tampa, she described her speech as "heartfelt." 

The former first lady of Massachusetts is one of several big speakers on deck whose task is to rally the party around Mitt Romney, who is expected to be formally nominated on the floor late Tuesday afternoon. 

With Mrs. Romney poised to tell the American public a bit about her husband's personal side -- and perhaps rebut the Democratic narrative that his candidacy is a threat to women -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is in town preparing for his keynote. 

Speaking to the Michigan delegation Tuesday morning, Christie joked that his staff had done "a fabulous job of lowering expectations." 

Far from it, the anticipation has been building around his speech, with the party relying on Christie to light a fire under delegates and viewers -- and send everyone home eager to hear the rest of the Republican 2012 story from Ryan tomorrow and Romney himself on closing night. 

The entire affair has competition, though, not just from now-Hurricane Isaac, but President Obama. 

The president was beginning a three-state counter-programming tour Tuesday with two visits later in the day in Ames, Iowa, and Fort Collins, Colo. 

Though planned visits by Vice President Biden to Florida this week were canceled due to the storm, Obama is charging ahead with rallies aimed at depriving the Republicans of coverage all to themselves. 

Polls show Romney and Obama running about even, but each man holds significant leads with voters in important subtexts that could sway the roughly 10 percent of Americans who say they haven't settled yet on one man or the other. 

Obama holds a big lead as the candidate who best relates to the needs of poor and middle-class Americans. That advantage could come into sharper focus as Isaac moves slowly toward the U.S. Gulf Coast after forcing Monday's convention opening to be delayed. 

The storm was expected to come ashore late Tuesday or Wednesday somewhere near New Orleans. That resurrected the ghost of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city and killed 1,800 people exactly seven years ago. 

Trying to balance leadership with campaigning, Obama delivered a brief update on Isaac from the White House before leaving. "Now is not the time to tempt fate," he said. "You need to take this seriously." 

Partisanship had not subsided with Isaac's gathering strength. Republicans were determined to play to Romney's strengths this week. He is more highly regarded as the candidate who can restore the economy, the top issue for voters 

Ultimately, it will be up to Romney himself "to let the American people see who he is," said Christie. 

Meanwhile, Republican leaders will try to convince Americans that Obama is a failed president, unable to keep his promise to restore economic vitality and reduce stubbornly high unemployment -- still at 8.3 percent three years after the Great Recession. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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