FREDERICKSBURG, Va.- Less than two hours before his running mate is set to square off with Barack Obama in their second presidential debate, Paul Ryan held a rally here in front of a boisterous crowd of 2,500 and warned them of what he thought the president would do:

"He's going to try to divide this county, he' s going to try to distract this country. He's going to keep trying to distort Mitt Romney's record in order to try and win this election by default. And we won't fall for it, will we?"

"Put aside the hundreds of millions of dollars of distortion on TV, the clutter," Ryan said at the Fredericksburg Expo and Conference Center. "You see the president can't run on his record. He can't run on his broken promises, and so as a result hope and change has become attack, defame, and blame, anger and frustration."

Ryan called Romney "a decisive leader" predicting to the crowd of supporters "you will see [that] tonight."

Ryan called his running mate to wish him luck this afternoon, posting a photograph of the phone call to Twitter just 30 minutes before the debate started with the message "Great conversation with @MittRomney. Proud to stand with Mitt tonight."