MANCHESTER, N.H. – On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney casts himself as the guardian of American opportunity, who would stop President Barack Obama's attempt "to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society."

Romney draws inspiration from the country's founders, he argues, while Obama seeks a "European-style welfare state" to redistribute wealth and create "equal outcomes" regardless of individual effort and success.

That formulation has obvious political advantages. It fits Romney's strategy of trying to unite Republicans through shared hostility to Obama, and to channel the resentment of middle-class voters against increasing economic stress in recent years.

But it carries risks to Romney from left and right. To Democrats, it is a straw-man formulation that twists the facts of Obama's record and implies that the president is somehow less than American. The largest entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid – were all enacted before Obama entered grade school.

David Axelrod, the president's chief campaign strategist, calls it "Orwellian" that Romney, the son of a wealthy business executive and prominent politician, would style himself the champion of "merit" against a man who reached the White House after being raised by a single mother.

"Barack Obama doesn't need any lectures from Mitt Romney on merit and making your own way in life," Axelrod said.

To some conservatives, the Romney argument only highlights what they see as a lack of commitment from him to translate his words into specific actions to reverse the growth of government and expand markets and individual liberties.

"His proposals tend to be fairly incremental," said William Kristol, the former Republican White House aide who is now editor of the Weekly Standard. "But how does that fit with such a grand statement of the differences between the two parties?

"You hear him say things that make you think: They must have focus-grouped this and decided the phrases sound good."

Romney's advisers say he has pondered the larger issues about the direction of U.S. society since he served as a Mormon missionary in France amid student riots in the '60s. And they insist there is more beef than he receives credit for in his proposals to rein in spending, reduce regulations and convert Medicare from an open-ended program with defined benefits to one that defines and limits the federal government's contribution.

"He has put together the boldest, most credible plan of anyone out there," said Stuart Stevens, a top Romney campaign strategist.

Critics on the right see something different: a tinkerer more committed to avoiding political risk than to fundamental changes in the role of government. Romney opposes moving Social Security, the landmark entitlement program, toward a system of private accounts. He does not support repeal of Medicare's prescription drug benefit, the substantial new entitlement enacted under President George W. Bush.

Nor has Romney joined flat-tax advocates in proposing to scrap the long-standing U.S. principle of progressive income taxation, which levies higher rates on those with higher incomes and thus redistributes wealth from the rich to the middle class and the poor.

As governor of Massachusetts, he embraced the state's obligation to increase minority hiring.

"If you go program by program, the differences between Obama and Romney are more ones of degree," said Michael D. Tanner, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute. "He's a manager. He wants to manage the status quo, not blow it up. The status quo is redistributionist."

In New Hampshire and elsewhere on the 2012 primary trail, Romney's rivals offer similar arguments.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich scorns Romney as a "timid Massachusetts moderate," criticizing his plan to eliminate capital gains taxes only for Americans making under $200,000 a year.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who surged from behind to a virtual tie with Romney in the Iowa caucuses, highlights his role in helping end the federal welfare entitlement in 1996. Opposing him, he says, were the sorts of Republicans who behave like "cheap Democrats" rather than conservative reformers.

Santorum proposes to extend that achievement by converting all means-tested federal entitlement programs, including food stamps and housing subsidies, into block grants to states. Romney would convert the federal role in Medicaid, the health program for the poor and the disabled, into block grants, but has no comparable plan for all other federal entitlements.

Advisers to Obama, gearing up for a general election battle, criticize Romney's formulation from different directions. The largest entitlement expansion the president has engineered, a national health care plan requiring Americans to obtain health coverage and offering subsidies to those who cannot afford it, closely resembles the expansion of coverage Romney ushered in for Massachusetts.

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