Jonathan Martin and Jim VandeHei have a story today focusing on Romney downplaying a victory in New Hampshire. But further down the two reporters note what might have been a strategic misstep by the Romney campaign early on:

The dispute pits Romney's original ad team, led by Alex Castellanos, against the consultants he brought on from McCain's team after the senator's summer implosion, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, according to several Republicans close to the campaign.

It centers on who pushed hardest for the months-long emphasis on conservative issues that often exposed Romney's penchant for shifting positions and who wanted to amplify the messages he is using now focusing on changing Washington.

The dispute has simmered for months but it is starting to boil over as problems mount and aides start framing who is to blame for setbacks.

Romney said tension inside his campaign over strategic decisions has not been a big deal. He blamed reporters -- not his advisers -- for forcing him to focus intensely on his conservative views instead of the message of change he is carrying to every event in New Hampshire.

"I get asked a lot about my conservative credentials, largely by members of the media," he said in the interview. "I go on TV and it's like: 'Tell me about your church, tell me where you stand on abortion.'

"There is no question the focus of my campaign has been on changing Washington."

But Romney last fall downplayed his outsider message, choosing instead to outflank then-top rival Rudy Giuliani on the ideological right. Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said the campaign never entirely dropped the outsider approach but he did concede "the emphasis was not on the change message during that period."

Two points to make about this approach. One, it's very easy to second-guess a strategy when you're down but it doesn't necessarily make the initial strategy wrong. Romney knew, as we all did, that he had a past of liberal positions. He and his advisors felt those positions would doom any run for the presidency. In that, they weren't wrong (which is not to say they were right). What we're seeing now is the dynamics of any presidential race, with the unforeseen consequences ruining carefully laid plans.

Point two: Focusing on Rudy, if the Politico's reporting is sound, was a mistake. Huckabee's rise should tell us, if anything, that the social conservative wing of the GOP is alive and kicking, but it should also tell us that, perhaps above all, GOP voters respect authenticity. Rudy, whether he understood it or not, knew that there was no way he could transform himself to fit the social conservative ideal, so he didn't try (for the most part). This gave him an aura of authenticity (as opposed to the aura of inevitability), which appealed to a lot of Republican voters. We'll just have to see if it pays off.

Romney's folks looked at the GOP electorate and saw something different: The business acumen, the Olympics -- that was all icing on the cake, where the real substance was going to be Romney's conservatism. It probably looked good in strategy sessions. If Rudy was going to be undone by his social liberalism, went the thinking, then Romney was going to take that off the table from the outset. Only, they didn't really take into account why many GOP voters respected Rudy. So Romney turned himself from a good business man, who might have legitimately claimed he was the anti-Washington (even with some socially liberal views), into a "phony" conservative with business experience. And what this did was allow someone like Huckabee to use his business experience against Mitt, as in: Here's a guy who cares only about the bottom line.

Like I said above, it's easy to second-guess strategies. Focus more on his business success or his conservatism? Who knew that someone like Rudy, or McCain, or Huckabee would upset everything? But what Romney should have done is bring focus to his real strengths sooner, rather than in the last couple days before a make-or-break primary.