“I don’t know,” he replied, according to a source in the room, before going on to warn that Social Security and Medicare are — in the source’s paraphrase — “basically the third rails in politics and he doesn’t know if we’re going to be able to actually make a dent in reforming them.”…

Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom, however, said in an email that Romney’s not ambivalent about entitlements.

“Mitt Romney recognizes that it is absolutely imperative that we take on the rising cost of entitlements, which is why in his book he devotes an entire chapter to the specific steps he would pursue to rein in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” he said, pointing to the chapter in which Romney suggests a combination of technical adjustments and more sweeping reforms to the entitlement plans.