By choosing the terms in which he couches his opinions, he can look like he’s backing one side or the other.
To be fair. Mitt ought to be pressed on specifics like marriage amendments. He may not believe that marriage LEGISLATION has a leg to stand on in the current Federal constitutional regime, but an amendment is a whole nother ball of wax. It has to depend on no precedent whatsoever other than getting into the Constitution through the prescribed amendment process.
You have to look at two statements from Priebus:
“You can’t federalize that kind of mandate”
“Individual states can make that decision on their own”
If you push for a federal constitutional amendment ban on same-sex marriage (a federal mandate), then you take the issue away from the states to make their own decisions on this.
Given that Priebus said that 1.) “you can’t federalize that kind of mandate” and 2.) that “individual states can make that decision on their own,” there is no way to harmonize both statements and follow them up by saying that Romney still supports a federal constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.