When Mitt Romney spoke...

...before the NAACP convention yesterday, the former governor of Massachusetts wasn't really addressing black voters; as in 2008, they're expected to support President Obama in overwhelming numbers. No, the Republican candidate's real audience was white independent voters in swing states. (To be fair, that's whom the president is targeting as well; they're the ones who are expected to decide this election.) And that's why Romney didn't mind getting booed when he talked of "eliminating Obamacare." In fact, that may have been the whole point of the speech. Because as Romney said later in the day, before an audience in Montana (my emphasis): 

But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. But don't forget nothing is really free. It has to paid for by people in the private sector creating goods and services, and if people want jobs more than they want free stuff from government, then they are going to have to get government to be smaller. And if they don't want to repeal Obamacare they are going to have to give me some other stuff they are thinking about cutting, but my list takes Obamacare off first and I have a lot of other things I am thinking of cutting. 

"Free stuff." That's just the sort of language that would have appealed to someone like my father. He was forever going on and on about government "handouts" to you-know-who. So the "dog whistle" message to "independent" voters here is, "I won't give any more of your money to those people."