In an editorial published yesterday the Concord Monitor explains why, according to this newspaper, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney should not become the next president of the United States. The editorial starts off as follows:

If you were building a Republican presidential candidate from a kit, imagine what pieces you might use: an athletic build, ramrod posture, Reaganesque hair, a charismatic speaking style and a crisp dark suit. You’d add a beautiful wife and family, a wildly successful business career and just enough executive government experience. You’d pour in some old GOP bromides – spending cuts and lower taxes – plus some new positions for 2008: anti-immigrant rhetoric and a focus on faith.

Add it all up and you get Mitt Romney, a disquieting figure who sure looks like the next president and most surely must be stopped.

Not only that, no, Romney is also a successful businessman who, for years, worked in one of the most competitive and difficult business fields out there. O, and he saved the Olympic Games of Salt Lake City, the Concord Monitor points out.

All the above indicates that Romney is a great candidate and would most likely make a fine president. The newspaper, however, disagrees:

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.

The above leads Blue Hampshire to conclude that the race for NH will be very close indeed. Chuck Adkins predicts that Romney won’t be able to win this, for him, must-win state.

I disagree.

These are old concerns. Romney has been accused of flip-flopping for months already. Yet, he continues to rise in the national polls and continues to do well in the early primary states. The editorial is so anti-Romney that only those who didn’t think about voting for Romney in the first place would be influenced by it: they would simply get more anti-Romney than they already were. Those, however, who are considering voting for Romney know that he changes his position on a number of issues; as such, the editorial is unlikely to influence them. Most of those people will probably think ’same old, same old.’

Flip-flopping is an issue for Romney, but he has been dealing with flip-flop accusations from the very start of his campaign. He knows how to explain all his changes. What’s more, he often says that he doesn’t apologize for changing his views: he changed them, well, you can oppose him for being pro-choice 15 years ago, or you can embrace him now that he’s pro-life.

In fact, Romney could turn it into a strength: if the pro-life movement wants to succeed, it has to convince many people who are currently pro-choice that they’re wrong. By punishing one of the people who changed their views the pro-life movement is, in reality, hurting himself.

Having said that, ‘flip-flopping’ could most certainly become a major issue if Romney is the Republican nominee. When the Democratic nominee and the Republican nominee have a go at each other, you can bet on it that Romney will be portrayed as some kind of a Republican Kerry.

That’s a serious concern: both for Romney himself and for Republican voters.

More at Jules Crittenden’s place.