Some around the web wonder if Romney’s speech last night — and my opening in writing it up — indicate a veepstakes shift. He said:

Upon reflection, I came to understand that while I could defend their absence from my address, I had missed an opportunity … an opportunity to clearly assert that non-believers have just as great a stake as believers in defending religious liberty… If a society takes it upon itself to prescribe and proscribe certain streams of belief — to prohibit certain less-favored strains of conscience — it may be the non-believer who is among the first to be condemned. A coercive monopoly of belief threatens everyone, whether we are talking about those who search the philosophies of men or follow the words of God.

I’d argue if you read his whole speech — or my whole piece — he’s not saying anything different than what he said in December. He reflected on the criticism he got, realized he could have avoided some of it — thus opening the speech and its message to more people — if he had made clear what he thought was clear: that non-believers have as much right not to believe as believers do to worship freely.