Last night, Mitt Romney officially accepted the Nomination of the Republican Party as its Candidate for President.

APnews.myway.com has the story:

Mitt Romney launched his fall campaign for the White House in a rousing Republican National Convention finale Thursday night, proclaiming America needs “jobs, lots of jobs” and promising to create 12 million of them in perilous economic times.

“Now is the time to restore the promise of America,” Romney said in excerpts released in advance of his prime-time speech to a nation struggling with 8.3 percent unemployment and the slowest economic recovery in decades.

He muted his criticism in the advance excerpts of President Barack Obama, his quarry in a close and unpredictable race for the White House.

“I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed,” he said. “But his promises gave way to disappointment and division.”

(AP) Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney points to the photographer as he and vice presidential…

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“This isn’t something we have to accept ,” he said, appealing to millions of voters who say they are disappointed in the president yet haven’t yet decided to cast their votes for his Republican challenger.

“Now is the moment when we can stand up and say, ‘I’m an American. I make my destiny. And we deserve better! My children deserve better! My family deserves better! My country deserves better!”

Romney’s remarks came after other speakers filled out a week-long portrait of the GOP nominee as a man of family and faith, savvy and successful in business, savior of the 2002 Winter Olympics, yet careful with a buck. A portion of the convention stage was rebuilt overnight so he would appear surrounded by delegates rather than speaking from a distance, an attempt to soften his image as a sometimes-stiff and distant candidate.

“He shoveled snow and raked leaves for the elderly. He took down tables and swept floors at church dinners,” said Grant Bennett, describing Romney’s volunteer work as an unpaid lay clergy leader in the Mormon church.

Following him to the podium, Ted and Pat Oparowski tenderly recalled how Romney befriended their 14-year-old son David as he was dying of cancer. “We will be ever grateful to Mitt for his love and concern,” she said.

(AP) Michigan delegate Linda Lee Tarver from Lansing wipes away her tears during the Republican National…

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Beyond the heartfelt personal testimonials and political hoopla, the evening marked one of a very few opportunities any presidential challenger is granted to appeal to millions of voters in a single night.

The two-month campaign to come includes other big moments – principally a series of one-on-one debates with Democrat Obama – in a race for the White House that has been close for months. In excess of $500 million has been spent on campaign television commercials so far, almost all of it in the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

Romney holds a fundraising advantage over Obama, and his high command hopes to expand the electoral map soon if post-convention polls in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and perhaps elsewhere indicate it’s worth the investment. In a speech that blended the political and the personal, Romney talked in his excerpts of the importance of the love he felt from his parents and that he and his wife Ann have sought to give their children and grandchildren.

“All the laws and legislation in the world will never heal this world like the loving hearts and arms of mothers and fathers,” he said.

As for Obama, he said, “Many Americans have given up on this president, but they haven’t ever thought about giving up. Not on themselves, Not on each other. And not on America.”

Back in 1980, when Ronald Wilson Reagan accepted the Republican Party’s Nomination, he spoke the following words:

Nearly 150 years after Tom Paine wrote those words, an American president told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a “rendezvous with destiny.” I believe that this generation of Americans today has a rendezvous with destiny.

Tonight, let us dedicate ourselves to renewing the American compact. I ask you not simply to “Trust me,” but to trust your values–our values–and to hold me responsible for living up to them. I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional, or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the Earth who came here in search of freedom.

Some say that spirit no longer exists. But I have seen it — I have felt it — all across the land; in the big cities, the small towns and in rural America. The American spirit is still there, ready to blaze into life if you and I are willing to do what has to be done; the practical, down-to-earth things that will stimulate our economy, increase productivity and put America back to work. The time is now to resolve that the basis of a firm and principled foreign policy is one that takes the world as it is and seeks to change it by leadership and example; not by harangue, harassment or wishful thinking.

The time is now to say that while we shall seek new friendships and expand and improve others, we shall not do so by breaking our word or casting aside old friends and allies.

And, the time is now to redeem promises once made to the American people by another candidate, in another time and another place. He said, “For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government–federal, state, and local–costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching. As an immediate program of action, we must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate unnecessary functions of government…we must consolidate subdivisions of government and, like the private citizen, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford.”

“I propose to you, my friends, and through you that government of all kinds, big and little be made solvent and that the example be set by the president of the United State and his Cabinet.”

So said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention in July 1932.

The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands. But, to do this will take many of us, working together. I ask you tonight to volunteer your help in this cause so we can carry our message throughout the land.

Yes, isn’t now the time that we, the people, carried out these unkempt promises? Let us pledge to each other and to all America on this July day 48 years later, we intend to do just that.

I have thought of something that is not part of my speech and I’m worried over whether I should do it.

Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe freely: Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the boat people of Southeast Asia, of Cuba and Haiti, the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.

I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest — I’m more afraid not to — that we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer. God bless America.

Today…32 years later…I’m making the same suggestion. God bless America.

And, so it begins…