“They’re doing the soft love approach,” said Sandra Stroman, a convention participant from Chester, S.C. “They’re holding up our women in this party and putting those women in front of the cameras, saying, ‘Here are our Republican women. Do they look like we have waged war against them?’ ”

With the intention of appealing to voters beyond the party’s base, many Republican women are simply avoiding the mention of abortion or gay rights because they are seen as too divisive in such a close, contentious race. Some acknowledge deliberately playing down their own views as a strategic move. Instead, they want to talk about the economy, just like the Romney campaign.

“Anything that gives women the idea that they can’t find friends in the Republican Party is unhelpful,” said Kristen Soltis, a pollster and an adviser to Crossroads Generation, a pro-Romney super PAC. “I think what will be decisive in this election are those sort of kitchen-table economics: How am going to pay my bills? How am I going to make sure my kids get a good education? How am I going to make sure my parents are healthy?”

Ms. Soltis, 28, is personally in favor of same-sex marriage but is opposed to abortion. She says she tends not to focus the party platform, and hopes that one day it might shift to the center again, at least on social issues.