House Speaker John Boehner asks 'Where are the jobs?' in convention speech

House Speaker John Boehner delivered a rousing convention speech, indicting President Barack Obama as inept in his management of the US economy as he laid out a well-honed case for electing Mitt Romney instead.

"He can't fix the economy because he doesn't know how it was built," Boehner said to roars of approval from a worked-up crowd during his speech here at the Republican National Convention.

"The American people are still asking 'where are the jobs,' but President Obama only offers excuses instead of answers.

"His record is a shadow of his rhetoric. Yet he has the nerve to say that he's moving us forward, and the audacity to hope that we'll believe him," he said, in a play on the title of Obama's best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope."

Tuesday was the first full day of the Republican nominating event, which was curtailed by a day because of Hurricane Isaac, which skirted past Tampa as a tropical storm.

Boehner recalled one of the early jobs of his youth working at his father's bar outside Cincinnati, where he grew up as one of 12 children, in an overture to white working-class voters that could be crucial to a Romney victory, especially in key swing states like Ohio.

Particularly stinging was Boehner's use of Obama's own words against him, mocking the Democratic president's past statements that "the private sector is doing fine" and "we're better off than we would have been," among others.

Boehner said the imperative of the November election was "throwing out the politician who doesn't get it, and electing a new president who does."

He delivered the address shortly after former Massachusetts governor Romney, in a raucous state-by-state roll call of delegates, surpassed the 1,144 threshold needed to formally clinch the presidential nomination.

Boehner's speech reached its emotional highpoint with Romney's call-and-response chant in which he asked, "Do you know what we'd do?" as the crowd roared back "We'd throw him out."

"So in 70 days, when the American people walk into the voting booth, what should we do? Throw him out!" the Republican lawmaker said, joining the crowd in the response.

"Because we can do better. We can do a lot better," Boehner added.

Romney lies neck-and-neck with Obama in national polls just 10 weeks before an election that should be his for the taking, given the sour economy and an unemployment rate that is lingering stubbornly above eight percent.

Watch the full speech below, uploaded to YouTube on August 28, 2012: