Polls show that at least 80% of African-Americans disapprove of the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, leading some conservatives to give up ever making significant progress in the left-leaning black community.

But skeptics should recognize that as recently as the presidency of George W. Bush, Republicans did much better with African-American voters than they have recently. While Bush still lost the black vote badly, he got 11% of it in 2004, compared to Mitt Romney’s 6%. This is not a trivial difference: if Romney had gotten the same percentage as Bush, he would have come 1.6 million votes closer to catching Obama.

Surely, this sort of performance shouldn’t be out of reach for future GOP nominees, especially with Barack Obama no longer on the ballot.