White House hopeful Mitt Romney ran into a buzzsaw of criticism from black voters on Wednesday when he told them he wanted to repeal President Barack Obama's landmark health care reforms.
Romney was met with a loud and sustained chorus of boos — likely the most negative reaction to anything he has said in his year-long presidential campaign — when he brought up his opposition to what he and fellow Republicans call "Obamacare".
"If our goal is jobs, we must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn," Romney told the annual convention of the NAACP, the country's premier civil rights group.
"To do this, I will eliminate expensive non-essential programmes like Obamacare," he said.
Before Romney could finish his sentence, the boos rained down loudly, lasting more than 20 seconds.
His comments came at an especially sensitive time. Two weeks after the US Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional, the Republican-led House of Representatives will vote Wednesday on whether to repeal the law.
The repeal bill is expected to pass the House, but will likely die in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
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