Will Romney dodge health care bullet?

In May, when Mitt Romney's status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination appeared secure, the former Massachusetts governor sought to address his most pressing political liability when he promised to repeal and replace President Obama's national health care reform law.

In the same speech, which received lukewarm reviews at the time, Romney signaled that he would not back away from the mandate-driven plan he enacted in 2006, which remained anathema to Republican primary voters.

"I did what I believed was right for the people of my state," Romney said in his address at the University of Michigan.

In refusing to apologize for his Massachusetts plan, Romney was betting that the bigger political hazard would be to equivocate on the issue and thereby risk bolstering perceptions he has long fought of being willing to shift his positions to match the changing political winds.

Though health care remains a salient topic in the broader Republican debate, and one that Rick Perry and the other GOP candidates have sought to use against him at every turn, it has not been the albatross hanging around Romney's neck that it appeared likely to become.

With jobs, the budget and Social Security reform all taking precedent as key issues in the GOP contest, health care has receded somewhat onto the backburner, at least for now.

"The economy going to hell has benefited nobody more than it's benefited Mitt Romney, for the simple reason that we're talking about the economy now instead of ObamaCare," said South Carolina GOP strategist Welsey Donehue, who worked for Romney's 2008 campaign but remains unaffiliated with a candidate in the current cycle.

After earning the endorsement of Tim Pawlenty, who as a candidate famously coined the pejorative term "ObamneyCare," and with other issues dominating the debates, Romney has been able to breathe a bit easier knowing that health care has become an issue, rather than the issue of the GOP race.

"Health care is a giant need, but it's a secondary need to a job, so nobody's talking about it," Donehue said. "Everybody wants to be healthy, but first they want to eat, and when people can barely afford to put groceries on their table, they're not worried about medical bills. They're worried about how they're going to feed their kids."

As of late, it has been Romney who has kept the heat on Perry, as he has sought at every turn to bring attention to Perry's labeling of Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme." In an election year in which finding a candidate who can beat Obama is a prime issue for many Republican voters, Romney's effort to portray the Texas governor as an extremist and a weak general election candidate may prove more salient than his own record on health care.

For its part, the Perry campaign scoffs at the premise that health care won't remain an enormous problem for Romney. On the stump, Perry has continued to tie Romney's health care plan to Obama's, calling both overhauls "bad medicine" during a swing through Iowa last week.

And in a nominating fight that is likely to be decided by staunchly conservative voters, it is more than plausible to imagine a scenario in which Perry effectively uses the Massachusetts plan as part of his broader economic argument against Romney.

"Health care is still a whopper of an issue in the Republican primary because the Tea Party's never going to cozy up to it and a lot of fiscal conservatives aren't either," said Republican strategist Ford O'Connell. "When you can run out there and say, 'RomneyCare has cost the state 18,000 jobs -- wait a minute, you call yourself a savvy job creator, and your piece of legislation has cost 18,000 jobs?' It still hurts him, and I think for that reason, a lot of people would make the point that it's Perry's nomination to lose."

Still, private conversations with Romney's brain trust reveal an overriding sense of satisfaction with how the issue has played out so far. His strategists were dealt a difficult hand on an issue that dominated the national political discourse for more than a year, and they have weathered the storm to date.

"This cycle is about people not just being mad, but scared about their kids and grandkids' future, and all people care about is finding someone who has the ability to turn this nation around," a senior Romney strategist said. "This is not about what happened years ago in Massachusetts. It's what's going to happen in the next four years in D.C., and I think people accept that. A lot of the other guys will spend a lot of time trying to address this issue, and I just think voters don't care. They understand it, they've talked about it, they've heard about it, and they don't care."

But polls continue to show that a majority of voters favor repealing the national health care reform law, and Republican primary voters still raise the issue regularly in town-hall meetings on the campaign trail. With several months to go before the first votes are cast, Romney's opponents have plenty of time to nudge the issue back into the forefront of the political equation.

Thursday's debate in Orlando will be the next opportunity for the other GOP contenders to do just that.

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Scott Conroy is a National Political Reporter for RealClearPolitics and a contributor for CBS News..