Mitt Romney courts African American vote to show he's 'severely compassionate conservative'

Out to prove to white voters he cares about black voters. (Darren Hauck/Reuters) The Republican Party once had a lock on the African American vote. But that began loosening 125 years ago when the "Lily-White" movement openly began to push blacks out of the party. Even though Southern Democrats were the official party of Jim Crow, African Americans who could vote drifted ever more into the Democratic Party. Republicans never recovered the percentages of black voters the party could count on in the first three decades immediately following Emancipation. Now, the African American vote is the most reliably Democratic of any racial or ethnic group in the nation.

Mitt Romney has belatedly begun making an effort to woo black voters. But running against an African American president who garnered 96 percent of the black vote in 2008 is a decidedly uphill struggle.

Just how much was evident in a poor neighborhood of Philadelphia Thursday when the candidate ran into a small but hostile crowd. Madaline G. Dunn, 78, a resident of the area for 50 years, said she was 'personally offended' that Romney was visiting the neighborhood.

Michael Fauntroy, an associate professor of American government at George Mason University who has written extensively about the African American intersection with the Republican Party, told the Washington Post it's not really about black voters: 'Ultimately, it's an indirect appeal. It's about showing a willingness to show concern for all Americans and a way to come across as severely compassionate conservative." That's the view of others as well:

Despite the obvious difficulties, Romney's outreach to black voters could reap dividends even if he is unable to significantly chip into Obama's support. 'Suburban voters will be a real battleground, and upscale white voters like to think of themselves as tolerant and they won't vote for a candidate that is seen as exclusionary, and the Romney folks must be aware of that,' said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. 'He has to persuade suburban voters that he isn't Rick Santorum. He could break the mold a little bit and do some campaigning in African American communities. It would get people talking, and it would be all gain and very little pain.'

By that measure, Romney's appeal to African American voters is actually an appeal to white voters who are pretty sure Rick Santorum didn't say "blah" and that Newt Gingrich was targeting black Americans when he talked about the "food stamp president." Could be.

If Team Romney were hoping that Obama's personal endorsement of marriage equality was going to be a game-changer among African Americans, they can forget about it.

The reality, as Fauntroy says, is that Romney isn't going to do much better among black voters than John McCain did in 2008. A Washington Post/ABC poll published this week shows Obama getting 92 percent of the African American vote and Romney getting 5 percent. "Uphill" doesn't begin to cover it.