The Concord Monitor, of Concord, New Hampshire, has come out with a brilliant anti-endorsement of Mitt Romney. Well worth a read. Here is the tail end of it:

People can change, and intransigence is not necessarily a virtue. But Romney has yet to explain this particular set of turnarounds in a way that convinces voters they are based on anything other than his own ambition.

In the 2008 campaign for president, there are numerous issues on which Romney has no record, and so voters must take him at his word. On these issues, those words are often chilling. While other candidates of both parties speak of restoring America’s moral leadership in the world, Romney has said he’d like to “double” the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where inmates have been held for years without formal charge or access to the courts. He dodges the issue of torture – unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won’t do it.

When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we’ll know it.

Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.
Concord Monitor – Romney should not be the next president

Over at Mickey Mouse dot com, The Note has this little comment about Rudy’s latest ad:

Giuliani has a new TV ad up today — and it’s him as commander-in-chief, invoking memories of Ronald Reagan’s ending of the Iranian hostage crisis. “The best way you deal with dictators, the best way you deal with tyrants and terrorists, you stand up to them. You don’t back down.”
THE NOTE: Razor Thin Republican Race

Hmm. I seem to remember that while Jimmy Carter was busy standing up to the Iranians, even attempting military maneuvers to rescue the hostages, a yet-to-be-sworn-in Ronald Reagan and his gang were secretly conducting back channel negotiations to win the hostages’ release through a series of secret deals which culminated in the Iran-Contra affair.

While the Dems may not want voters reminded of how ineffectually the Carter Whitehouse handed this crisis, does Rudy really want to remind them of how illegally Ronny and Co. took care of business?

Kurt Campbell, guesting today on Nicholas Kristof’s blog over at the Times, does an elegant and capable job of skewering the Bushists and other RNC recalcitrants for trying, yet again, to rewrite history. This time, the very recent past. Here is an excerpt:

Take for instance the president’s characterization of the 1990’s during his second inaugural address, just as the hopes of a new bipartisan approach to the new global challenges were fading in the wind: “After the shipwreck of communism,” Bush declared, “came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical – and then there came a day of fire.” The language perfectly captures the Bushist critique of the Democrats; elitist in their university cocoons or trial lawyer firms, fundamentally lazy, and lucky too. Thank God Republicans were finally back in power when things got serious on 9/11.

Yet this picture of being lost in the 1990’s, of a Gatsby-like holiday from history during a fun-filled and frolicking interwar period, ignores all of the drama that played out almost exclusively in America’s favor during this supposedly relaxed decade. Indeed, the 1990’s involved enormous and important good works internationally and helped set the scene for continued American power on the global stage. Increasingly, the first Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration can be seen in retrospect as essentially fitting together to complete a decade of accomplishment that paints President George W. Bush’s subsequent term in office as an outlier.
Nicholas D. Kristof – Opinion – New York Times Blog

Here in Fortune Land we have never been quite so sanguine as the MSM has when it comes to picking dark horses and sticking with it. Here, from that very self-same MSM (The New York Times) we have a story of cum-upance to warm your heart. Pop open the rumble seat, this is starting to get interesting!

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, Nov. 8 — Mike Huckabee’s field staff had expected a modest crowd for a campaign event at a tiny rural community college near here on Wednesday. But as people began to cram into the shoe-box-size room, campaign organizers scurried to roll back a dividing wall and set up extra chairs.

To the Huckabee campaign, it was another small note in a recent trickle of encouraging moments. His fund-raising is up, the campaign just received its first major Christian conservative endorsement and most of all — to Mr. Huckabee’s obvious delight — opponents are beginning to take potshots at him.

From Back of G.O.P. Pack, Huckabee Is Stirring – New York Times

Huckabee has always hoped for this, to bloom too early would have killed his campaign, but now, less than two months out, is just about right. The Dems should be concerned, because Huckabee is the real deal, unlike his opponents, and his authenticity is the only real threat the Republicans have to face the Democrats with in less than a year from now (tick-tock)…