Republicans gather to nominate Romney, watching anxiously as storm nears New Orleans

TAMPA, Fla. - Republicans dove Tuesday into the ritual of formally nominating Mitt Romney as their candidate to unseat President Barack Obama, watching anxiously as a tropical storm threatened to turn into a hurricane and hit New Orleans just as the first political speeches are uncorked.

Romney's wife, Ann, will be among the night's speakers, and she will show a more personal side of a candidate the Obama campaign has tried to paint as a big business titan out of touch with the struggles of average Americans.

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 per cent 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 an advantage could come into sharper focus as Tropical Storm 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. The slow response to the chaos put the presidency of Republican George W. Bush into a downward political spiral.

Asserting himself, Obama planned to deliver an update on Isaac from the White House before leaving on a three-state campaign trip.

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

Ultimately, it will up to Romney himself "to let the American people see who he is," said New Jersey's colorful governor, Chris Christie, who delivers the keynote address Tuesday.

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 per cent three years after the Great Recession.

Ann Romney's speech will be an important part of the party's effort to present her husband as more than a successful businessman and former governor of Massachusetts.

Romney's candidacy has received only lacklustre enthusiasm among some Republicans who question his commitment to conservative positions given his more moderate stances on abortion, gay rights and gun control as governor of Massachusetts, a liberal, traditionally Democratic state.

Republicans are increasingly energized and influenced by the anti-tax, small-government tea party movement, whose members tend to see political moderation and compromise as akin to betrayal.

But Romney thrilled conservatives by naming one of their favourites, congressman Paul Ryan, as his vice-presidential running mate.

The convention offers Romney a chance to shore up his support among social conservatives in the party's base. But he caused a brief stir over abortion when he said in a CBS television interview Monday that he opposes abortions except "in the case of rape and incest, and the health and life of the mother."

Any exceptions made solely on the basis of a woman's health have drawn particularly fierce criticism from abortion foes, who argue that exception is so broad as to do nothing to limit the procedure. But Romney's aides quickly said he wasn't advocating an exemption for a woman's health.

Still, his comment underscored his difference of opinion on the subject with his running mate, Ryan, as well as with his party's convention platform, which opposes all abortions.

Romney's acceptance speech Thursday night will be the highlight of the convention. Ryan delivers his acceptance speech Wednesday.

The Republican gathering is followed by next week's Democratic convention. Obama and his party will intensify attacks on Romney's business experience, claiming that the private equity firm he once headed, Bain Capital, made a fortune for investors while bankrupting some companies and laying off workers.

Obama on Tuesday left on a two-day campaign trip to college campuses in the battleground states of Iowa, Colorado and Virginia.

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Associated Press writers Steven R. Hurst, Donna Cassata, Brian Bakst, Thomas Beaumont, Tamara Lush, Brendan Farrington, Julie Mazziotta and Steve Peoples contributed to this report.