Jacob Heilbrunn sets up a misleading opposition:

In office, Romney might well follow neocon policies rhetorically, but would he actually implement them? Or would the old Massachusetts moderate resurface?

Romney’s record as a “Massachusetts moderate” doesn’t tell us much about how he would conduct foreign policy that is reassuring. Romney has been decidedly anti-Iranian since at least 2006 when he indulged in his ridiculous grandstanding over Khatami’s visit to Harvard. It’s also a mistake to think that there is any contradiction between being a social liberal and supporting hard-line and hawkish foreign policy. If you doubt that, just consider Giuliani. Obviously, Romney’s policy positions are always subject to change, and he isn’t going to follow through on policies that could seriously threaten his political fortunes, but his foreign policy positions are just about the only ones he has never changed (perhaps because he didn’t take public positions until he started his first presidential campaign). Moderate Republicans in general may tend to be less inclined to ideological and hard-line foreign policy views, but most moderate Republicans on the national stage tend to be hawkish on foreign policy partly because that seems to compensate for their disagreements with movement conservatives on domestic issues. Even if they aren’t strictly neoconservative, most moderate Republicans in Congress have rarely seen a foreign war they couldn’t get behind. Foreign policy is arguably the one area where moderate and conservative Republicans have the fewest disagreements.