The Washington Post reports that Mitt Romney is slowing winning the support of the conservative grassroots, but not their hearts. Many conservatives are ready to vote for Romney because he is the best chance of beating Barack Obama, but they still worry that Romney is, deep in his heart, a secret liberal. Yes, he is saying the right things on the campaign trail—but what does he say behind closed doors, when the rest of us are not listening?

This week we got a chance to find out.

Romney recently held a private fundraiser at an estate in Palm Beach. No journalists were allowed inside to listen to his remarks at the off the record event—but it turns out his comments were overheard by reporters outside on a public sidewalk. So what does Romney say when he’s meeting in private with the scions of the GOP establishment?

It turns out Romney does have secret plans if he is elected—to eliminate entire Cabinet agencies. His potential targets, he told the gathering, include the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But, Romney is quoted as saying, “I’m probably not going to lay out [publicly] just exactly which ones are going to go.”

This is exactly the opposite of what most of us expected. If his comments are to be believed, it turns out he intends to govern more conservatively then he lets on in his public events. He’s going to shut down whole government agencies, but doesn’t want to say so in public on the campaign trail.

In other words, for those who suspected that behind closed doors Romney was a secret liberal, it turns out he may really be a secret conservative. Who knew?