KENNER, La -- It was a substance-free, 12-minute prime-time performance that remains unlikely to sway a single vote, but Clint Eastwood's cameo appearance and conversation with an empty chair representing President Barack Obama in Thursday night's final hour of the Republican convention coverage remained a prime topic on the campaign trail Friday.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Actor Clint Eastwood speaks to an empty chair Thursday during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

Mitt Romney's top strategist told reporters on the candidate's campaign plane Friday that the moment should be judged as a performance, and that while not everyone may have liked it, Eastwood's very presence -- and concern for out-of-work Americans in particular -- made the rambling remarks by the 82-year old Academy Award winner worthwhile.

"The fact that he’s there shows he’s speaking his mind and if somebody wants to say I would have liked this different performance or that difference performance, have it," Romney campaign strategist Stuart Stevens told reporters, comparing the remarks to two famous Eastwood films. "Some people didn’t like 'Dirty Harry,' some people didn’t like 'Gran Torino,' that’s OK."

And while Ann Romney and several of Romney's top advisers remained stone-faced during Eastwood's appearance, Stevens said Mitt Romney very much enjoyed it.

"I was backstage with him and he was laughing," Stevens said."[Romney] thought it was funny."

A Romney adviser confirmed the remarks were ad-libbed, and the use of an empty chair as a prop was not discussed by the campaign. If there was any panic during the remarks, the adviser said, it might have come from the control room, where convention planners watched Eastwood continue for more than double his allotted time.

"He did what actors do sometimes, he did a little improv. If someone wants to say this wasn’t Clint Eastwood’s greatest performance, have at it. It doesn’t matter, you know," the adviser said. "It’s I think people saw that Clint Eastwood was not only endorsing Romney but endorsing the need for change. I liked that."

Meanwhile in Virginia, Romney running mate Paul Ryan faced a question by a reporter from NBC’s Hampton Roads affiliate WAVY if Eastwood's remarks were a distraction.

"I think Clint Eastwood was just being Clint Eastwood,” Ryan said in the interview to air Saturday. “One of the most profound things Clint said was that 23 million people out of work struggling to find jobs is just unacceptable."

Vice President Joe Biden, who was the butt of several of Eastwood's sharpest jokes, didn't mention the 'Dirty Harry' actor's performance during campaign stops in Ohio Friday.

But, according to pool reports, a supporter did allude to Eastwood's chair act, insisting to Biden during an impromptu stop at an Ohio fairgrounds that "You gotta keep the chair."

Biden didn't directly acknowledge the "chair" comment but gave the woman, Bev Kalmer of Poland, Ohio, a kiss on the lips.

Ann Romney, who spoke in prime time on the first full night of the convention, told CBS that Eastwood is "a unique guy and he did a unique thing" during his RNC appearance.

Asked if she was surprised by the unusual speech, she laughed and said merely "I didn't know it was coming."

Related: Clint Eastwood's 'invisible guest' RNC appearance is a hit online

POWELL, Ohio-- With less than 48 hours to go before the opening of the Republican nominating convention in Tampa, Mitt Romney's mind was on President Obama's speech four years ago as he addressed a rally Saturday in a swing county in Ohio. Romney called then Senator Obama's speech "brilliant," but assailed the president for failing to match results to his rhetoric. He predicted more of the same at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., next week. 

"He will have all sorts of promises to offer again. He'll tell you how much better things are now, but you know this time we have more than just the words. We have the record," Romney told roughly 5,000 supporters Saturday morning. "And we understand the big gap there is between what he promises and what he hopes and what he actually delivers. And that's why this November the people of Ohio are going to make sure we get a Republican in the White House and take back America." 

The attack on Obama's convention rhetoric comes as Romney prepares his own address to the nation -- a speech he told a conservative radio host Friday night he has yet to complete. And, as his campaign looks to refocus on the economy and a crucial demographic group where he trails President Obama: women. 

According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this week, Obama is still beating Romney among several key parts of his political base, including women. Romney trails the president by 10 percent -- 41 percent to 51 percent. Back in 2008, the female vote helped propel Obama to victory over Republican candidate John McCain. Obama captured 56 percent of the female vote four years ago, according to exit polls. 

Today, Romney tailored his business-friendly message to women, telling the Delaware County crowd he could do more to help female business owners than the current president.

"Just a word to the women entrepreneurs out there. If we become, if we become president and vice president, we want to speak to you, we want to help you," Romney said. "Women in this country are more likely to start businesses than men. Women need our help."

But beyond reaching out to female business owners, Romney did not alter his message to women specifically, nor did his running mate Paul Ryan, as they appeared side-by-side in the Buckeye state for the first time.

The role of making a more direct appeal to female voters will likely fall squarely on the shoulders of Ann Romney, long her husband's most effective surrogate with women, who will speak to millions in a prime-time address on Tuesday night at the convention. Romney campaign officials and RNC planners moved her speech yesterday from Monday to Tuesday to accommodate television network plans to only broadcast three nights of the convention and to ensure Mrs. Romney reaches the greatest audience possible.

The RNC has also packed the prime-time speaking schedule with other top women surrogates, including South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Luce Vela Fortuno, first lady of Puerto Rico, who will speak after Mrs. Romney on Tuesday.

The Obama campaign is not letting up on its outreach to female voters this election either. In addition to having several female speakers at the DNC convention next week, the "Romney/Ryan: Wrong for Women" bus tour will roll across the country talking about reproductive rights and women’s health.

ODESSA, TX – Mitt Romney returned to Texas oil country Tuesday to fuel his campaign coffers with nearly $7 million raised in just one day, largely with money from top energy industry executives.

So far this presidential campaign, Romney has extracted $13.9 million dollars in contributions from Texas, making it the second best fundraising state for the GOP nominee after cash-cow California. New York, with its massive financial sector, comes in a close third.

Unlike previous fundraising swings through the nation's largest oil-producing state, which have netted millions for Romney's campaign and the GOP Victory fund, Romney's two-step through Houston and Midland this time is geared at the oil and gas industry, and comes as the candidate is preparing to further outline his energy policy at a campaign event in New Mexico later this week.

Romney started his day with a luncheon at the Houstonian Hotel that was hosted by energy industry titans including Rex Tillerson, CEO of oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil, and L.E. Simmons, a fellow member of the LDS church and Romney's Texas finance chairman, who made his millions investing in the booming energy sector here. 

Harold Hamm, a billionaire pioneer in modern drilling techniques who spearheaded oil and gas development in North Dakota, now America's second largest oil producing state, was also in attendance at the $50,000 per person event, where Romney relayed his story as an example of bold economic risk taking.

Romney told this audience he planned to roll out more detail on his energy policy but said he would offer them a first look behind closed doors. 

"I know that we have members of the media here right now, so I'm not going to go through that in great detail so I can save a bit of that until a little later in the week. But your input is something I wanted to retain before we actually cross the ‘t’s and dot the ‘i’s on those policies," Romney said, telling some 125 top donors that his energy plan, centered on fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal would do a better job taking advantage of America's natural resources than that of President Barack Obama, echoing a common stump speech theme.

The presumptive GOP nominee has long focused on developing America's natural resources, particularly oil, gas, and coal as a key to unlocking the stagnant economy. He lists it first on his five-point plan to restore the economy at nearly every campaign event, and just last week accused Obama of waging a "war on coal," which he claims stifles job creation, particularly in coal-rich (and electoral-vote-rich) Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

Romney has come out against extending tax breaks for wind energy development, joking that you can't put a windmill on your car, and arguing for the economic necessity of expanding fossil fuel development in the near term.

Democrats have subsequently accused Romney of being in the pocket of oil companies, and of ignoring alternative energy, questioning how his energy plan, which thus far lacks specifics beyond a pledge to reach North American energy independence by 2021, is any different from the much-derided "Drill baby, drill" mantra of Republican candidates in 2008.

The final stop on Romney's energy pilgrimage comes Tuesday night at the Petroleum Club of Midland, where an invitation obtained by NBC News listed exploration and drilling company Concho Resources executives Timothy Leach and Jack Harper as event hosts, alongside Statewide Minerals owner Miles Boldrick, whose company website claims over 25,000 oil and gas wells nationwide.

For Romney, while the details of his energy policy remain to be seen, the cash well still runs deep.

CHILLICOTHE, OH – Mitt Romney used the final rally on his five-state bus tour to paint President Obama as an "intellectually exhausted" leader, forced to resort to "angry and desperate" tactics in his battle for re-election. 

"This is an election in which we should be talking about the path ahead, but you don't hear any answers coming from President Obama’s re-election campaign,” Romney said. “That’s because he's intellectually exhausted, out of ideas, and out of energy. And so his campaign has resorted to diversions and distractions, to demagoguing and defaming others. It’s an old game in politics; what’s different this year is that the president is taking things to a new low."

The speech, delivered before several thousand in the town square of Ohio's first capital city, was designed to contrast then-candidate Obama's soaring language of hope and change with the mud-slinging, increasingly nasty tone of this election’s TV ads and campaign trail rhetoric.

"This is what an angry and desperate presidency looks like," Romney said. "President Obama knows better, promised better and America deserves better."

"Over the last four years, this president has pushed Republicans and Democrats about as far apart as they can go,” Romney continued. “And now he and his allies are pushing us all even further apart by dividing us into groups. He demonizes some. He panders to others. His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then try to cobble together 51 percent of the pieces."

On a day that began with a battle over Medicare policy and that descended into a heated back-and-forth over charged comments made by Vice President Joe Biden in southern Virginia, Romney decried the negative tone of the campaign – even as he went on the attack.

Biden tells audience GOP banks would put them 'back in chains'

"Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America," Romney said.

The Obama campaign responded with a statement pointing out Romney's campaign, too, is engaged in negative attacks over the airwaves.

“Governor Romney's comments tonight seemed unhinged, and particularly strange coming at a time when he's pouring tens of millions of dollars into negative ads that are demonstrably false,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said.

ASHLAND, Va. -- Mitt Romney and his freshly minted running mate Paul Ryan refined their rhetoric and sharpened their attacks against President Barack Obama at their second joint stop of the day Saturday, firing up a crowded auditorium at a rally at Randolph-Macon College.

"He's going to divide and distract this country to win an election by default, and you know what? We're not going to fall for that," Ryan said to supporters craning their necks for the best possible views of the Republican ticket unveiled Saturday morning at a rally in Norfolk, Va.

At the afternoon event, the second major stop on a four-state bus tour designed to introduce the combined ticket to swing state voters, Romney praised his No. 2 as a leader who can reach across the aisle and pre-emptively defended his pick on the issue where Democrats believe him to be most vulnerable: his plan to remake Medicare as part of a larger budget reform.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., greet supporters during a campaign rally Saturday at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia.

"He's done something very few people in Washington know how to do. He's made friends on both sides of the aisle. He's garnered respect from Republicans and Democrats. And when the big issues have come up, like how do we save Medicare instead of doing what the president did, which is cutting it by $700 billion -- that's what President Obama did," Romney said, his microphone cutting out briefly. "This man said I'm going to find Democrats to work with. He found a Democrat to co-lead a piece of legislation."

That legislation, informally known as  the Wyden-Ryan plan for the Democratic senator who joined Ryan in fashioning it, remodels Medicare on a system of premium supports or vouchers for seniors, instead of the traditional Medicare model. It’s a lightning-rod issue, and Romney's comments make it clear his campaign is eager to define Ryan's role in the battle over his controversial budget proposals before Democrats  -- who had spent Saturday morning blasting Ryan as an ideologue too extreme for America -- do it for him.

To that end, Romney praised his choice as a man of considerable character and someone willing to make the hard choices in governing, but as crowd members here stamped their feet on the bleachers and cheered, the GOP contenders also took a break from praising one another to offer red meat to their supporters.

"We're going to talk about issues and a vision for America, and not drag down in the dirt like you're seeing from the Obama campaign," Romney said.

Related: Romney introduces Paul Ryan as his running mate 

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Paul Ryan’s got a friend in Bobby Jindal.

Jindal, governor of Louisiana, told an audience of conservative activists on Saturday that presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney would send a “powerful message” on budgetary issues were he to choose Ryan, Wisconsin’s U.S. House representative, as his running mate.

The remarks came as Jindal – a buzzed-about veep prospect himself – wrapped up a keynote address to the Red State Gathering in Jacksonville, an annual conference of Tea Party and other conservative activist groups.

"I think picking somebody like a Paul Ryan would send a very powerful message that this administration was serious about Medicare reform, entitlement reform, shrinking the size of government, and doing so in a courageous way," Jindal said of a Romney presidency.

Ryan is chairman of the House Budget Committee and the author of a controversial plan that Democrats have attacked over its cuts to federal entitlement programs. 

Romney, who won Ryan’s endorsement in March, has spoken favorably of the plan, pleasing conservatives who have helped to make Ryan’s name a nationwide brand.

Still, some at the conference here clearly had another veepstaker in mind.

“I was going to God bless you and pray that our nominee has you and your first lady on the list to be vice president,” an audience member said as Jindal took questions.

Jindal, brushing aside the compliment, responded that he has a “bias” toward the executive experience earned by governors, before adding that Ryan is an exception to that rule.

Asked later if he was making an endorsement of a Romney-Ryan ticket, Jindal said no.

“It’s certainly not my place to be making endorsements. I mean, it’s really up to Governor Romney to pick who he wants,” Jindal told NBC News.  “I just think Paul Ryan brings a lot to the table.”

“Paul's a friend.  Paul's been a great leader. I think he’s an example of a great choice,” Jindal added later.  “I think there are several other examples of great candidates out there as well.”

Jindal earlier told the crowd that he also admired Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Texas Gov. Rick Perry– whom Jindal backed for president during the Republican primaries.

Perry, who dropped out of the race in January, announced for president at last year’s Red State Gathering, held in Charleston, S.C.

Charles Dharapak / AP

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns at Stepto's Bar-B-Q Shack in Evansville, Ind. on Saturday.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Mitt Romney stumped with Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock on Saturday at a barbecue shack here, seeking to link himself with the popular conservative who unseated a longtime Washington incumbent earlier this year.

“We gotta get this guy elected to the U.S. Senate,” Romney began his speech at Stepto’s Bar-B-Q Shack, a small restaurant off the main highway in Evansville.

As he praised Mourdock, the state treasurer who defeated six-term senator Dick Lugar in the state’s May Republican primary, he seemed to try to affiliate himself with the Tea Party principles Mourdock played up, like a balanced budget.

“You can’t keep spending massively more than you take in,” Romney said as he explained his five key principles for economic recovery. As the crowd drowned him out in applause, he continued, “A treasurer knows that. A governor knows that.”

“There’s only one place in America that doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t keep spending massively more than you take in every year, and that’s Washington. And one reason we’re both going there is to change Washington,” he said.

While this event was billed as a Mourdock campaign event, Romney spent just as much time slamming President Barack Obama, criticizing him for breaking his promise to keep unemployment under 8 percent.

But Mourdock took the spotlight back at the end of the event, criticizing his Democratic Senate opponent, Joe Donnelly, as Romney worked the dining room shaking hands.

“While the governor’s doing that, I have to share with all of you a thought I had coming in today, how proud I am to stand next to the president of the United States, Mitt Romney. And it’s funny, my opponent, Joe Donnelly, doesn’t want to be seen with their candidate, isn’t that amazing?”

Immediately after his short remarks, Romney headed to a fundraiser at the home of local entrepreneur Steven Chancellor, the CEO of the American Patriot Group, the parent company of several subsidiaries.