WATCH: Romney attacks Obama, draws jeers from NAACP crowd

HOUSTON - 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.

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 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 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.