It’s no secret that blacks vote heavily for Democrats, especially in presidential races. But that isn’t stopping Mitt Romney from asking for their support anyway.
At the NAACP’s annual confab yesterday in Houston, the Republican made a compelling case for it, too — winning himself a standing ovation in the process.
Yes, the crowd booed when Romney vowed to repeal ObamaCare.
But his main point was that Barack Obama has failed blacks — as much, if not more, than he’s failed the rest of the nation.
Romney surely understood why blacks gave Obama a whopping 95 percent of their vote four years ago; rarely do they give Dems less than 90 percent — and Obama, the first black major-party presidential nominee, was no ordinary Democrat.
But alas, he said, Obama failed to deliver.
“The course the president has set,” Romney noted, hasn’t helped the very folks who need help most.
That, sadly, is indisputable.
“In June,” said Romney, “the overall unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2 percent” — but the rate for blacks “actually went up, from 13.6 percent to 14.4 percent.”
Romney also cited the second-class educational system to which African Americans are confined: “Black children are 17 percent of students nationwide, but . . . 42 percent of the students in our worst-performing schools.”
He blamed pols (Dems, for the most part, though he didn’t spell it out) for trying to have it both ways: “You can be the voice of disadvantaged public-school students or you can be the protector of special interests like the teachers unions, but you can’t be both.”
(Romney might have aimed that barb at some local NAACP chapters — like New York’s — which have been, umm, unduly influenced by teachers unions.)
He touched on other areas of interest to blacks, citing “neighborhoods filled with violence and fear . . . empty of opportunity.” And he stressed the importance of a key institution — “family” — and vowed to “defend traditional marriage.”
That, too, won him applause.
Romney’s job-creation plan would also help blacks, along with everyone else: He’d OK the Keystone pipeline, for instance, expand trade and help businesses by cutting taxes and red tape.
No, blacks (and the NAACP, in particular) won’t see eye-to-eye with everything Romney backs.
But at least he made his case in person.
Which is more than the incumbent — who’s no doubt taking the black vote for granted — will be able to say: Rather than attend himself, Obama is sending Vice President Joe Biden for today’s session.
How blacks respond remains to be seen.