The day after Mr. Romney squeezed out a razor-thin victory in the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Obama’s political brain-trust trained most of its fire on him, painting him as both a Wall Street 1 percent type and an unprincipled flip-flopper. How long the Obama campaign can condemn Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, on both counts is not clear, given that independent voters may view his protean tendencies as evidence of pragmatism.  For now, Mr. Obama’s advisers are playing up both elements, calculating that this approach will deepen Republicans’ doubts about Mr. Romney’s conservative credentials while scaring off moderates who fear he will espouse economic policies that favor wealthy people like him.  “Taking two positions on every fundamental issue doesn’t make you a centrist; it makes you a charlatan,” David Axelrod, the campaign’s senior strategist, said in a conference call with reporters to discuss the Iowa results.  Mr. Axelrod and the campaign manager, Jim Messina, said Mr. Romney’s nearly three-way tie with former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Representative Ron Paul of Texas showed that he had generated little enthusiasm among Republicans and had failed to dispel doubts among the party faithful that he would be an adequate standard-bearer.  Still, Mr. Axelrod brushed aside a question about how Mr. Obama would run against Mr. Santorum, should he knock Mr. Romney off his perch. And Mr. Messina said only that the campaign was ready to confront any candidate in the Republican crop.  Mr. Axelrod said Mr. Romney left Iowa in the same shape he entered it, as a “weak front-runner.” The caucuses, he said, hobbled two of his significant rivals, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and former Speaker Newt Gingrich. But the muddy result did not settle the issue of whether Republicans would yet coalesce around a conservative alternative — Mr. Santorum, for example.  This failure, Mr. Axelrod said, came even after Mr. Romney “redoubled” his move to the right on issues like abortion and gay rights. And it came despite an avalanche of negative television ads paid for by a wealthy political action committee that supports Mr. Romney’s positions and aimed at Mr. Gingrich, which devastated his campaign. Mr. Axelrod predicted that would be a blueprint for Mr. Romney in the primaries and the general election.  Like Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama is backed by well-financed political action committees, known as “super PACs,” which can broadcast commercials on his behalf. Mr. Axelrod did not rule out commercials that would go after Mr. Romney, but he insisted that the campaign would not engage in “gratuitous unfounded attacks.”  The bigger conundrum for the Obama campaign is how to balance its two lines of criticism of Mr. Romney, particularly if he wins the nomination.  Do they go the out-of-touch, protector-of-Wall-Street route or the flip-flopper route?  In one portrayal, he is the greedy Wall Street type: witness the Democrats’ display in Iowa last weekend of a worker who was laid off from a company that had been restructured by Bain Capital on Mr. Romney’s watch.  The other picture paints him as the weathervane-watcher who was for Roe v. Wade before he was against it, who said he believed that humans contributed to global warming before he said he was not so sure, and who said he was glad Mr. Obama was “copying” parts of his Massachusetts health reform before he said he would seek to repeal the president’s health-care overhaul.  But there is a kink in that approach. Independent voters might view Mr. Romney’s shifting positions as pragmatic. And by highlighting his evolving views, political analysts say, the Obama campaign risks unintentionally promoting the image of Mr. Romney as a moderate.  The very things that have made Mr. Romney less palatable to the conservatives who populate the Republican primaries and caucuses — his past moderate positions — are what make him more palatable to the independent voters who will turn up next November.  “It’s one of the principal reasons why he runs better than the other Republican candidates” when matched up against Mr. Obama, said Andrew Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center. “One could argue that seeing Romney as not taking strong positions might be an argument on his behalf.”  Are American voters that calculating?  “Possibly,” said John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University. Like Mr. Kohut, Mr. Sides said American voters reacted negatively to candidates they perceived as ideologically extreme. “It might be more effective to concentrate on the conservatism,” he argued.  Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Messina did not show their hand on Wednesday. But there are signs that the narrative of Mr. Romney as wealthy and ultraconservative is gaining favor within the Obama campaign.  On Wednesday evening, the campaign’s spokesman, Ben LaBolt, issued a statement noting Mr. Romney was against the appointment of Richard Cordray as the head of a new consumer protection board. Mr. Romney, he said, “today stood with predatory lenders and Republicans in Congress over the middle class.”
The Obama campaign is facing a conundrum as it decides how to tarnish the man it sees as the presidentâs likely opponent.