Opinion: Mitt Romney faces a two-front war

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Manchester, N.H. -- The barbs directed at Mitt Romney during the Republican presidential debate tonight were fast and furious (as one commentator opined, it’s clear several of his rivals simply don’t like him).

There’s another debate among the GOP White House contenders Sunday night, so Romney presumably will absorb some more slings and arrows. But as he seeks to right his political ship in New Hampshire, the former Massachusetts governor is battling more than just the other candidates. The state’s best-known newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader, has him in its sights.

The paper recently endorsed John McCain for president -- something of a surprise, given that the Arizona senator occasionally has strayed from the staunch conservative positions the Union Leader unyieldingly promotes. Not content with spelling out who it was for, the paper on New Year’s Day published an editorial scolding Romney for his multiple policy reversals, concluding he lacked ‘solid political conviction’ (the piece was headlined: ‘Mitt’s flips: Why they matter’).

Today, Union Leader readers awoke to another anti-Romney editorial, this one on the front page. The piece took a prominent Romney supporter -- one of New Hampshire’s Republican senators, Judd Gregg -- to task for trying to lower expectations for his candidate in the state’s Tuesday primary.

Gregg, as the editorial noted, was widely quoted not so long ago when he dismissed the importance of the Iowa caucuses. ‘Iowa picks corn. New Hampshire picks presidents,’ Gregg had said.

But following Romney’s disappointing second-place finish in the caucuses -- which steepened the odds against him in New Hampshire -- Gregg said his candidate now only has to ‘run well’ on Tuesday.

The Union Leader would have none of that. Its editorial began: ‘First, the good news for supporters of Mitt Romney: A man has survived a 47-story fall from a New York skyscraper. So anything is possible. Now the bad news: Judd Gregg was right. New Hampshire still picks presidents.’

The Union Leader once exercised enormous political influence in New Hampshire. That is less so now, in part because fewer of the state’s residents sing its political tune. Still, its drumbeat against Romney cannot be a pleasant sound for him.

-- Don Frederick