The shift follows meetings in recent months between the candidate and some national tea party activists.
Sal Russo, a strategist for the Tea Party Express who met with Romney aides in April, described a “misunderstanding as to what the tea party stood for.”
But he added: “I think they understand now that the tea party movement is a very broad-based movement, and one that is very consistent with Governor Romney’s core beliefs.”
Romney adviser Kevin Madden called the new tone “a convergence of priorities” as the former governor hones a small-government, cut-spending message long embraced by the tea party movement.
“Now that we’re looking for a candidate to carry that message banner, you’re seeing the message in a way meeting the movement and the movement meeting a candidate’s message,” Madden said.
Romney campaign aides and supporters concede that the candidate has not yet made the sale, but they say he will win over conservative voters. They point to the support of a tea party favorite, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), who is campaigning nationally for Romney.
“We have a lot of work to do in South Carolina in the next 10 days, but we are proud of all of the strong support we have from conservatives like Governor Nikki Haley,” said Andrea Saul, a Romney spokeswoman.
Polls have shown Romney performing less well than other GOP candidates among evangelical and the most conservative Republican voters. His aides are likely to point to Tuesday night’s exit-poll results from New Hampshire to show improvement with the Republican base, including his winning tea party supporters by a wide margin and topping Santorum among evangelicals.
Still, national and South Carolina-based activists said Romney has a difficult task in unifying the party base.
Many social conservative leaders are still seething over the party’s experience in 2008, when evangelical Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses but the base didn’t unite, and John McCain locked up the nomination early.
“We made a terrible mistake in 2008,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Another evangelical leader, Gary Bauer, who endorsed Santorum, said that “the longer that there are multiple candidates, the easier it will be for any front-runner, and that’s certainly the case for Romney.”
Several tea party activists on the ground in South Carolina said they had yet to receive any outreach from the Romney campaign. And several said the endorsement by Haley angered some of her biggest supporters, who see her decision as a repayment for the financial support that Romney provided her 2010 campaign.
It was “payback, and that’s kind of what we’re against,” said Joe Thompson, head of a tea party group in York County, in northern South Carolina.
“I’m sure she had her reasons, but I wouldn’t have picked him,” said Janet Spencer of North Myrtle Beach, chairman of the Carolina Patriots group.
Matt Kibbe, president of the pro-tea-party group FreedomWorks, said his organization has a super PAC that has raised about $2 million and could inject itself into the race to push a yet-undeclared candidate, such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is backing a weakened Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Kibbe noted that the qualifying periods for many later primary races will remain open for weeks — and that a new candidate could attract enough support to provoke a contested convention.
“In this more decentralized process, if Romney continues to create this vacuum by not consolidating 30 to 40 percent, the vacuum has to be filled,” Kibbe said. “If Newt or Santorum can’t do it, somebody’s going to do it.”
It is an admittedly unlikely scenario — many state ballot rules are complicated, and the concept of staging a convention battle ignores the reality that nominations are often won through momentum.
Among the candidates who remain, Romney’s critics can’t agree on who should get the nod. Gingrich backers are pushing for Santorum and Perry to drop out, while Santorum supporters see an obvious solution if Gingrich and Perry clear the way.
Complicating matters for the anti-Romney wing is a compressed campaign schedule that will allow him to gain momentum if he racks up victories, while the presence of super PACs provide a form of life support for candidates who might otherwise have to exit the race.
Some say the process may happen naturally after South Carolina votes.
“One of the things that causes people to drop out,” said Bauer, who ran for president in 2000, “is when the quality of hotel you’re staying in goes down every week, and you’re laying off staff.”
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