Reading into the Bob Zoellick pick, Joyner makes the Romney-as-realist argument:

My sense all along has been that Romney, while willing to say pretty much anything on the campaign trail, is actually the guy who governed with substantial success as a moderate Republican (sorry, "severe conservative") in liberal Democratic Massachusetts. While his foreign policy team includes enough neocons to keep that part of the base happy, his policy papers have strongly hinted at a conventionally Realist foreign policy. The Zoellick choice is a really welcome reinforcement of that message and the notion that he might emerge as Secretary of State rather than, say, John Bolton strikes me as much more in keeping with Romney’s history.

Larison pushes back:

What history would that be? Romney doesn’t have a history on foreign policy as a politician before 2005, and since then he has been predictably and excessively hawkish. During this campaign, he has been inclined to favor so-called "Cheneyites" and hard-liners on every issue.... Zoellick’s appointment is the thinnest reed on which to place hopes for a sane Romney foreign policy I have ever seen.

Another Larison observation contradicts the premise of our thread: