Mitt Romney pushed through Florida on Saturday, assuring energetic audiences his campaign was on the upswing and promising to usher in a new era of bipartisanship.

Romney opened his three-stop bus tour by sounding a confident note in Pensacola, where he told an audience of roughly 10,000 that the end of President Barack Obama's term in office was in sight.

"You know the supporters of the president's have this chant. They do: 'Four more years, four more years,'" Romney said. "I like '10 more days' a lot better."

Faulting Obama for being "divisive" and demonizing those that opposed him, the GOP presidential nominee underscored a pledge he's been making increasingly on the campaign trail -- to bring together opposing factions in Washington and tackle the heated partisan divide.

"In your life, if you've got someone you've got to work with and you disagree, why, you find some way to work together," he told an audience at an airport hangar in Kissimmee. "We're going to have to have an administration in Washington, my team in Washington, that's willing to work with people across the aisle."

Even as he promised to bring together politicians of all parties, Republican officials who traveled with Romney underscored the difficulty of achieving that goal.

Senate candidate and current Rep. Connie Mack told the Kissimmee audience that, if elected, he would go about dismantling Democrats' signature achievements.

"With your help, we'll turn this country around," Mack said to big cheers as he explained he would vote to repeal the president's health care plan and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation legislation, as well as vote to cut taxes.

Earlier in the day, Sen. Marco Rubio dismissed a policy booklet released by the Obama administration last week as a "picture book" full of wrong-headed ideas.

"Unfortunately, there's nothing really innovative in that picture book," he said. "They're the ideas that have failed every time they've ever been tried. They're expensive ideas. They're the ideas of countries that people come here to get away from."

An Obama campaign spokeswoman issued a statement scoffing at Romney's bipartisan rhetoric.

"The American people shouldn't trust a word Mitt Romney says on his promise of bipartisanship," said spokeswoman Lis Smith. "Over the last six years he's been running for president, he hasn't stood up once to the most extreme voices in the Republican Party -- in fact, he catered to them."

Romney's visit to the state came on the first day of in-person early voting in Florida, and the candidate encouraged his supporters to head to the polls in a state his campaign sees as a potential win Nov. 6.

"The earlier you vote, the more help you can give us getting other people to the polls," he said in Kissimmee. "Because we're going to have to turn out our people."

After his campaign announced it would scrap Sunday's events in Virginia, Romney offered his sympathies to those in the path of Hurricane Sandy.

"I hope you'll keep the folks in Virginia and New Jersey and New York and all along the coast in your minds and in your hearts," he said. "You know how tough these hurricanes can be and our hearts go out to them."

Rubio was to campaign with Romney at a third stop in Land O'Lakes, but left the trail after his daughter was airlifted to a Miami hospital after a vehicle accident unrelated to Rubio's campaign activities. She was in stable condition, Rubio's office said in a statement.