Can Mitt's sanity strategy actually work

Romney met with a group of about 25 steelworkers at a campaign stop in the northern New Hampshire town of Berlin.

The former corporate raider, who has a net worth of about $250 million, got a less rapt reception than at some of his meetings with fellow business professionals.

The workers peppered Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, with questions about why cutting government spending would stimulate the economy, how he would adequately protect Social Security and whether he considered himself a member of the Tea Party.

Romney hedged on the latter question.

"I don't know that you sign a membership," he said. "What I consider myself is someone who is in sync with the Tea Party."

Many Tea Party members don't see themselves as "in sync" with Romney, however. In Massachusetts he helped author the statewide healthcare mandate that was an inspiration for President Barack Obama's 2010 national health reforms

Obamacare and Romneycare, as they are derisively referred too, are disliked by the Tea Party as an example of government overreach. Romney has defended the state law while promising to repeal the federal version, should he be elected.

Romney reiterated his view that military spending should be exempt from any attempt to balance the federal budget. Defense spending accounts for about half of discretionary U.S. federal spending.

This time around, as you may have noticed, things are a bit different. The Iowa Straw Poll, an event dominated by far-right activists, came and went last weekend without Romney lifting a finger, a far cry from four years ago when he invested heavily to win the event. And when a top social conservative leader in that state, Bob Vander Plaats, demanded that the GOP field sign on to his "marriage vow," Romney didn't just refuse -- he branded the document "undignified and inappropriate." He also declined to sign a pledge from a different conservative group on abortion, and stayed as far away from the recent debt ceiling debate as possible, letting one of his rivals, Michele Bachmann, use the issue to strengthen her bond with the base. While Bachmann swore at a recent debate that allowing a default would have been preferable to the deal President Obama and GOP leaders struck, Romney simply ducked the question.

The change in Romney's posture can be subtle -- he remains, on paper, a very conservative candidate -- but it's impossible to miss.

There are some obvious reasons for it. For one, Romney was brand new to the national Republican world the last time out and felt the need to compensate for the culturally moderate paper trail he left in Massachusetts, where he'd waged two statewide campaign as a pro-choice, pro-gay rights Republican. Today, he doesn't need to strain quite so hard to fit in.