Mitt Romney spoke at the NAACP this week. I was impressed that he went to face a crowd that he knew was 95 percent opposed to him. He made his case, took some boos, stood his ground and kept his poise. His speech was gracious (apart from his use of the dismissive label "Obamacare"), and he offered outlines of some areas in which the Republican agenda converges with African-American interests.

But there was no evidence of any effort to tailor an agenda or even a program to the specific needs of this very distinctive demographic. In Romney's apparent view, the policies that help the richest will also help the poorest. The policies that will help the few will also help the many.

Which suggests that Romney's speech didn't reveal the Republican Party's African-American strategy as much as Mike Turzai's speech did.

Turzai, majority leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, in speaking to the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania last month, triumphantly included the following item in a list of legislative accomplishments:

"Voter ID — which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania — done!"

In 2011, more than a dozen state legislatures passed voter identification laws, which New York University's Brennan Center for Justice projects could create obstacles to voting for 5 million Americans. The laws will make it especially hard for African-Americans, who voted massively for Barack Obama in 2008, as well as for Hispanics and young people — two groups that gave Obama two-thirds of their votes in 2008.

The specific voter ID law mentioned by Turzai requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID to vote. Yet more than 9 percent of Pennsylvania's registered voters do not have a driver's license, the most common form of photo ID. A disproportionate share of those voters are minorities. This voter ID law will achieve its intended purpose, which is to make it harder for minorities to vote — and will not achieve its stated purpose, which is to reduce voter fraud.

The only kind of voter fraud reduced by a photo ID law is when people try to vote in another person's name, and that doesn't happen often enough to matter. A five-year probe by George W. Bush's Justice Department found no such cases.

Republican strategists have long had something else in mind.

Paul Weyrich — the conservative icon who coined the term "Moral Majority," co-founded that movement, founded The Heritage Foundation, started the Free Congress Foundation and founded the American Legislative Exchange Council — had a reputation for being blunt and outspoken.

He was both in his remarks in 1980 when speaking to a group of Christian evangelicals. Weyrich said:

"Many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

In 2009, the year after Weyrich died, the American Legislative Exchange Council approved "model voter ID legislation" with the intention of having it passed in as many state legislatures as possible.

The model legislation prohibited student IDs, to help disenfranchise young voters. Various forms of the law now require a passport or a birth certificate to prove citizenship before registering to vote — a form of ID that blacks and Latinos are less likely to have.

Other laws, including the Pennsylvania law, require government-issued photo IDs at the polls.

The speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives justified his support for measures to keep college students from voting by saying that students "just vote their feelings." The president of the Dartmouth College Republicans, however, said that the GOP should "try to bring younger students into the fold as Republicans, as opposed to this, which seems like more of an attack."

Ken Mehlman, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told The New York Times' Frank Bruni last month, "A political party that ignores demography or ignores broader cultural trends does so at its own peril."

Of course, the Republicans are not exactly ignoring demography; they're acutely conscious of it. But for the sake of the country and the future of their party, they ought to use their energy and creativity to try to win these votes rather than do everything they can to suppress them.

Tom Rosshirt was a national security speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a foreign affairs spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Tom Rosshirt and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.