Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney drew jeers from black voters Wednesday as he criticized President Barack Obama and pledged to repeal the Democrats' health care overhaul. 
 
 N. Scott Phillips of Baltimore, center, and others, listen as Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks at the NAACP annual convention, Wednesday, July 11, 2012,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney points to someone as he leaves the stage after speaking at the NAACP annual convention, Wednesday, July 11, 2012, in Houston. (AP... (Associated Press) 
 
 Romney told the annual meeting of the NAACP that backing him over the Democratic incumbent, who won their overwhelming support in 2008, is in the best interest of their families. He acknowledged his Republican Party doesn't have a perfect record on race relations, but pledged during a sometimes rocky speech that, if elected, he would work with black leaders to put the country back to work. 
 
 "I am going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program that I can find _ and that includes Obamacare," Romney said, drawing his first boos of the day. 
 
 Romney stood motionless with a reserved expression for 15 seconds before noting a survey from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as support for his position. His rebuttal was greeted with silence. 
 
 Indeed, Romney at times found himself adjusting his prepared remarks _ with its typically business-oriented language _ for his audience and sounded like an like an instructor explaining policy. Once he noted the slow growth of the GDP, the Gross Domestic Product, only to quickly adjust by adding "the economy." 
 
 Romney received polite applause at several points during the speech. But he was interrupted again when he flatly accused Obama of failing to spark a more robust economic recovery. 
 
 "I know the president has said he will do those things. But he has not. He cannot. He will not. And his last four years in the White House prove it definitively," Romney said as the crowd's murmurs turned to louder groans. 
 
 Finally, he stopped amid loud jeers. 
 
 "If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him. You take a look," Romney shot back. 
 
 Romney, running against the nation's first black president, isn't going to win the African American vote. But he made a pitch with a major speech that also was aimed at showing independent and swing voters that he's willing to reach out to diverse audiences _ and demonstrating that his campaign and the Republican Party he leads are inclusive. 
 
 Looking to cut into Obama's support among African Americans, Romney called education the "civil rights issue of our era" and vowed to put blacks back to work. Citing June labor reports, he noted that the 14.4 percent unemployment rate among blacks is much higher than the 8.2 percent national average. Blacks tend to be unemployed longer and black families have a lower median income, Romney said. 
 
 All told, it's a difficult sell _ 95 percent of blacks backed Obama in 2008. But Romney's speech aside, Republicans and Democrats say he's making a statement just by showing up and speaking to the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group. 
 
 "The first thing you need to do is show up, so I ultimately think he's doing the right thing," said Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., one of two black Republicans in Congress. "What he's saying to everyone is that he's (running to become) America's president and not just those folks he thinks he can get votes from right now. I think that's a very important statement." 
 
 "You've got to get credit for showing up _ for being willing to go _ no question," said Karen Finney, a Democratic consultant who worked in the Clinton White House. "It's more about your actions than it is about what you say." 
 
 Obama spoke to the group during the 2008 campaign, as did his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain. Obama doesn't plan to speak this year. Instead, Vice President Joe Biden will address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Thursday. Obama is scheduled to address the National Urban League later this month. 
 
 Romney rarely speaks to predominantly black audiences at political events. One exception was a May visit to a charter school in Philadelphia, where he cast fixing the education system as a way to help blacks and other minorities. 
 
 In framing education as a civil rights issue, Romney is following in George W. Bush's footsteps. At a sweeping address to the NAACP in 2000, Bush, then the Republican presidential nominee, said the education system should "leave no child behind" and labeled the "soft bigotry of low expectations" as part of the problem facing black students. 
 
 Romney has a personal history with civil rights issues. His father, George, spoke out against segregation in the 1960s and, as governor of Michigan, toured the state's inner cities as race riots wracked Detroit and other urban areas across the country. He went on to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he pushed for housing reforms to help blacks. 
 
 In recent months, Obama has approached race from an intensely personal perspective. After the shooting of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin in a Florida neighborhood _ an act many blacks saw as racially motivated _ Obama spoke directly to Martin's parents from the Rose Garden. "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said. 
 
 Diminished enthusiasm for the president following the economic downturn could dampen black turnout, and that could make the difference in Southern states Obama won in 2008, particularly North Carolina and Virginia. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Philip Elliott in Washington and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report. ||||| Mitt Romney told members of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization on Wednesday that he would be a better president for the nation’s black families than President Obama has been. It was a bold appeal aimed at some of Obama’s most ardent supporters and cast Romney as someone willing to forcefully speak his piece even in unfriendly territory. 
 
 But the presumptive Republican nominee’s speech here received the most hostile reaction from any campaign audience this year, and Romney appeared unsettled by three rounds of loud boos. 
 
 “If you want a president who will make things better in the African American community, you are looking at him,” Romney said. When the crowd booed and hissed, he said, “You take a look.” 
 
 Romney made a direct appeal for support from black voters, who polls show overwhelmingly back the reelection of the nation’s first black president. Romney said his policies would help black families succeed in a sputtering economy, with rising federal debt and poor schools. 
 
 He also highlighted his father’s civil rights legacy as governor of Michigan and tried to build a bridge with black voters by talking about their shared faith in God and support of strong families. 
 
 “I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American families, you would vote for me for president,” Romney said. “I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color — and families of any color — more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I wouldn’t be running for president.” 
 
 Romney said that black families have suffered disproportionately under the Obama presidency, noting that the unemployment rate for African Americans rose to 14.4 percent last month, while the overall rate was 8.2 percent. 
 
 “If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, then a chronically bad economy would be equally bad for everyone,” he said. “Instead, it’s worse for African Americans in almost every way.” 
 
 Romney asked black voters to give him “a fair hearing” and promised that if he is elected, and if the NAACP invites him to return, he would address the group next year and “count it as a privilege.” 
 
 “In campaigns at their best, voters can expect a clear choice, and candidates can expect a fair hearing — only more so from a venerable organization like this one,” he said. 
 
 The hundreds of African Americans in attendance at the NAACP’s national convention in Houston gave Romney polite although subdued applause. But he received a loud and sustained spattering of boos when he referenced his opposition to the health-care law he called “Obamacare,” when he said Obama’s policies are not helping to create jobs and when he said he would be a better president for black families. Many portions of his speech received reserved cheers, such as his promise to defend traditional marriage, and many black voters in the audience stood to applaud him when he finished. 
 
 Although Romney appeared surprised by the booing, a campaign aide said he took it in stride, and his advisers said they were not bothered by the reaction. Indeed, they considered the speech gutsy. One adviser said privately that Romney has presented the same agenda to every audience since the start of the campaign and did not back down from advocating policies here that he knew black voters generally oppose, such as repealing Obama’s health-care overhaul. 
 
 “We understand that folks aren’t going to agree with us 100 percent, but at the end of the day, I think Governor Romney’s message was bold, he’s said things that needed to be said, he’s said things he’s always said about ending Obamacare and about bringing this economy back,” Tara Wall, the campaign’s black-outreach adviser, told reporters. 
 
 Later Wednesday, at a fundraiser in Montana, Romney said he gave the same speech to the NAACP that he gives to supporters. 
 
 “I don’t give different speeches to different audiences, all right?” Romney said. “I gave them the same speech. When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare, they weren’t happy. . . . That’s okay. I want people to know what I stand for, and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else. That’s just fine.” 
 
 Obama is not addressing the NAACP convention this year, although Vice President Biden is scheduled to speak to the group Thursday. The Obama campaign issued a statement arguing that Romney is “the wrong choice” for black families. 
 
 During the 2008 campaign, Republican nominee John McCain addressed the NAACP. Although President George W. Bush had declined invitations to speak during the first five years of his presidency, he accepted in 2006. In his speech that year, he lamented the Republican Party’s difficult relations with black voters, adding, “I understand that racism still lingers in America.” 
 
 On Wednesday, the Obama campaign responded to Romney’s remarks by issuing a statement saying that “African Americans can’t afford Romney Economics.” 
 
 It added: “At the NAACP today, leaders in the African American community recognized the devastating impact Mitt Romney’s policies would have on working families,” campaign spokesman Clo Ewing said in a statement. “He’d gut investments in education, energy, and infrastructure, and raise taxes on the middle class even as he gives $5 trillion in tax cuts weighted towards millionaires and billionaires. He’d put insurance companies back in charge, threatening the health of more than 30 million Americans who will gain coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. And he refused to use the opportunity today to finally lay out a plan for improving health care or education in this country.” 
 
 Romney — who met privately with NAACP leaders before his remarks — directly responded to attacks from the Democrats that he would help only the wealthiest Americans. 
 
 “The opposition charges that I and people in my party are running for office to help the rich,” he said. “Nonsense. The rich will do just fine whether I am elected or not. The president wants to make this a campaign about blaming the rich. I want to make this a campaign about helping the middle class.” ||||| HOUSTON — Mitt Romney drew boos, shouts and jeers from attendees while speaking here to the NAACP convention, who balked at his claim that he — not the country’s first black president — could best represent black America. 
 
 “If you want the president who will make things better in the African-American community, you’re looking at him," Romney said, as he was immediately met with loud shouts. 
 
 Text Size - 
 
 + 
 
 reset Romney booed on Obamacare Mitt: See what's 'in my heart' 
 
 (See also: Romney at NAACP: Mission impossible?) 
 
 The Republican’s call to repeal the health-care overhaul — which forms a standard part of Romney’s stump speech — also drew loud cries that temporarily drowned out his speech, causing Romney’s reception by the group to veer from genial to borderline hostile. 
 
 “If our goal is jobs we must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn,” Romney said, speaking to a community that has been hit hard by the economy. “To do this, I will eliminate non-essential programs like Obamacare.” 
 
 While the somewhat hostile reception is likely to dominate the cable news cycle and be used as evidence by Romney’s detractors that he’s out of touch with blacks and working-class Americans, the majority of the Republican’s talking points received polite applause, even in a period of heightened racial tension after the U.S. House recently voted to hold in contempt the country’s first black attorney general. 
 
 “I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president,” said. “I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color — and families of any color — more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I would not be running for president.” 
 
 Romney campaign aides dismissed the at times rowdy reception and said that “the door is open” now for Romney to make more inroads in the black community. 
 
 They cast the NAACP speech as an introduction to a community that they know is overwhelmingly expected to favor President Barack Obama in the fall — and a successful one at that. 
 
 “He had a standing ovation at the end. There was a lot more applause than disagreement,” said Tara Wall, a senior Romney adviser who was recently hired to reach out to African-Americans. “Obviously there’s going to be some disagreement. We understand that folks are not going to agree with us 100 percent. But at the end of the day, I think Governor Romney’s message was bold. He said what needed to be said.” 
 
 Wall said she didn’t believe Romney’s ideas were unpopular, even among the black community. 
 
 “I think again you may have been sitting in a different section than I was sitting in,” she told reporters. “I heard applause for a number of things that this governor communicated…I think coming in here he said there was going to be disagreement…You still at the end of the day are not going to back down to what he’s asserted all along when it comes to repealing Obamacare.” ||||| HOUSTON — Less than four years after President Obama swept into the White House with the overwhelming support of black voters, Mitt Romney appeared on Wednesday before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with a bold claim: “If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him,” Mr. Romney said. 
 
 His assertion was met with cackles and boos — as well as some tepid applause — and was emblematic of his entire speech, in which he tried to appeal to African-Americans, while still offering some tough medicine and policy prescriptions unpopular with them. 
 
 In his roughly 25-minute speech at the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual convention here in Houston, Mr. Romney promised to fight teachers’ unions and repeal the president’s health care plan, both positions that are unpopular among blacks. 
 
 When he said would “eliminate every nonessential expensive program I can find, that includes Obamacare,” the crowd began to boo — the first of several instances of vocal disagreement. Mr. Romney grinned nervously and deviated slightly from his prepared remarks, as he tried to explain his position. 
 
 He also said he would “defend traditional marriage.” Though many African-Americans have not warmed to same-sex marriage, the N.A.A.C.P. passed a resolution in May supporting marriage equality. 
 
 “I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president,” Mr. Romney said. 
 
 Mr. Romney’s speech was blunt and delivered with little of the typical rhetorical flourishes and soaring language that is often aimed at celebrating the history of the civil rights movement. 
 
 Instead, the presumptive Republican nominee came straight to the point, awkwardly acknowledging the lack of support among African-Americans for a candidate from his party. 
 
 But even as he accepted that reality, Mr. Romney appeared determined to deliver a tough critique of Mr. Obama’s economic policies in the face of a restless crowd that at several points booed him. 
 
 To the audience, he suggested that their support for the president was misplaced, a mistaken assumption that his policies would make their lives better. In fact, Mr. Romney said, African-Americans would do better if he was president. 
 
 “If I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color — and families of any color — more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I would not be running for president,” he said. 
 
 His message — offered with little veneer — was basically this: you should not support Mr. Obama just because he is an African-American. 
 
 Though Mr. Obama, the country’s first African-American president, won 95 percent of the black vote in 2008, Mr. Romney is not ceding any ground in what his campaign anticipates will be a close election in November. The black vote, which is still solidly in Mr. Obama’s column, could prove crucial in swing states like North Carolina and Virginia. 
 
 “This is an honor to address you, and one I had not expected, and one I value very highly,” Mr. Romney said, before later promising that, as president, he would return to the convention next year, if invited. 
 
 In May, Mr. Romney hired a consultant, Tara Wall, to help with outreach to black voters, and he also visited an inner-city charter school in West Philadelphia, where he was heckled. But his appearance on Wednesday was his most pointed wooing of black voters this campaign, even as he offered a speech that was less conciliatory in tone that many in the crowd had expected. 
 
 Mr. Romney also offered an economic pitch to the group, similar to the one he has been making to Hispanic voters — another critical voting bloc, especially in swing states like Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia. 
 
 “The unemployment rate, the duration of unemployment, average income, median family wealth are all worse in the black community,” he said. “In June, while the overall unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2 percent, the unemployment rate for African-Americans actually went up, from 13.6 percent to 14.4 percent.” 
 
 Last month, speaking to an annual conference of Hispanic officials, Mr. Romney addressed the topic of immigration — both legal and illegal — but ultimately gave a tweaked version of his economy-driven stump speech. 
 
 Many in the audience gave Mr. Romney credit for showing up and speaking to the group, but said they were frustrated with certain aspects of his speech. 
 
 “I give him thumbs up for being courageous,” said William Braxton, 59, a retired attendee from Charles County, Md., with a chuckle. “He was courageous without a doubt.” 
 
 But Mr. Braxton said he took issue with Mr. Romney’s claim that he would be the best president to serve black citizens. 
 
 “Oh my God, I was shocked,” Mr. Braxton said. “Never ever have I heard him say anything about how he would help the poor or underprivileged, let alone the black community. Maybe his view is that he could tell us what we want to hear and we’re supposed to swallow it.” 
 
 Donna Payne, 48, of Washington, D.C., who was at the convention as a representative of the Human Rights Campaign, said that she thought Mr. Romney “did the best he could,” before dissolving in laughter. 
 
 “To say he would repeal Obama’s health care plan is absolutely a joke,” Ms. Payne said. “I can’t believe he had the nerve to even bring up repealing the plan in the middle of speaking to an audience that fought hard for the health care plan and for coverage. It’s a total misread of who you’re talking to.” 
 
 In recent national polls, Mr. Obama still overwhelmingly leads Mr. Romney among black voters, many of whom are suspicious of Mr. Romney’s record on civil rights and diversity, especially when he was the governor of Massachusetts. Upon taking office, for his instance, he eliminated the state’s Office of Affirmative Action. 
 
 Mr. Romney is also a member of the Mormon Church, which until 1978 barred blacks from entering the priesthood. But Mr. Romney’s father, George Romney, a former governor of Michigan, was known for his aggressive stance on civil rights. The elder Mr. Romney refused to support Barry Goldwater in 1964 because he was worried about his extreme rhetoric and his campaign’s appeals to the Southern white segregationist vote, and he later used his perch as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development to try to integrate the suburbs. 
 
 Mr. Romney mentioned his father near the end of his speech, mentioning several instances of his civil rights work and concluding: “He was a man of the fairest instincts, and a man of faith who knew that every person was a child of God.” 
 
 Though Mr. Obama was invited to address the group as well, he canceled, citing a scheduling conflict, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will speak at the convention on Thursday.
– Mitt Romney spoke to the NAACP national convention today, and most of the headlines are centering on the boos he got when he started talking about ObamaCare and the president himself. He endured three rounds of jeering in all, which amounted to the "most hostile reception of his campaign so far," according to the Washington Post. The candidate himself appeared "visibly unsettled," it adds. Politico, too, uses "hostile" to describe the crowd at points, though it adds that most of Romney's speech was received politely. The first boos came after this line, notes AP: "I am going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program that I can find—and that includes ObamaCare." The New York Times says he also got some cackles for this assertion: "If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him."