WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney: flexible pragmatist, or a politically soulless flip-flopper too eager to please?

Consider the 2012 Republican presidential candidate’s revised explanation of the Massachusetts near-universal health care measure he signed into law while governor:

“We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country, and it can be done without letting government take over health care,” he wrote last year in his book No Apology.

But earlier this year, as he prepared to launch his White House campaign — and convince skeptical conservatives that he was truly one of them — the new paperback version read differently.

The line “we can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country” was gone. The next clause was changed to say, “and it was done without government taking over health care.”

A subtle attempt at reinvention? Even though the Massachusetts law is widely considered a model for the 2010 federal health care law, which conservatives loathe?

“If you’re looking for black and white answers, you’re not going to get them from Mitt Romney,” said Craig Robinson, the editor of The Iowa Republican, a GOP newsletter in the nation’s first caucus state, which votes Jan. 3.

Romney says there’s been no verbal chicanery.

“The hardback … started to be written in January (2009) when the president was just inaugurated. We hadn’t seen anything he had done yet,” he said on Fox’s Hannity program Nov. 21. At the time, President Barack Obama backed a “public option,” or public insurance plan, an idea he quickly dropped.

“When the paperback came out a year or two later, we had already gone through the health care story,” Romney said. “Out came a bill that was very different than what the original had looked like. So we updated the book.”

His staff points to a 2007 speech in which he made the same argument he makes today: “A one-size-fits-all national health care system is bound to fail. It ignores the very dramatic differences between states and it relies on a Washington bureaucracy to manage.”

But add this shifting nuance on health to position changes or tweaks on abortion, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays and a host of other issues, and Romney has a reputation as someone without a strong political core, an opportunistic flip-flopper who adjusts his stands as majority opinion shifts.

“He’s all over the place, and people don’t like that,” said Jane Aitken, a spokeswoman for the New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition, a conservative group that doesn’t endorse candidates.

Romney, 64, wouldn’t be interviewed for this profile.

His supporters maintain that his overarching philosophy of government is clear and consistent. He strongly believes that individuals can promote economic growth and change, and “government should be employed to assist and encourage that,” said former New Hampshire Attorney General Tom Rath, a Romney adviser.

More important, Rath said, “He sees things that are broke, and he sees solutions. Ultimately he tries to fix things. That’s the essence of who he is.”

Strategist and veteran GOP activist Ron Kaufman points to Romney’s “rationality and success as a (business) turnaround artist” as his strengths.