The editorial board of the Concord Monitor has yet to endorse either a Democrat or Republican for the upcoming New Hampshire party primaries. But that didn’t stop it from delivering this explicit anti-endorsement of Mitt Romney:

If you followed only his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, you might imagine Romney as a pragmatic moderate with liberal positions on numerous social issues and an ability to work well with Democrats. If you followed only his campaign for president, you’d swear he was a red-meat conservative, pandering to the religious right, whatever the cost. Pay attention to both, and you’re left to wonder if there’s anything at all at his core…

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.

Harsh, a bit.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a newspaper has done this before. I can cite one previous example, although it was more in the shape of a non-endorsement: The Tampa Tribune’s decision to withhold support from either Presidential candidate in the 2004 election, which, because of the paper’s conservative track record, was interpreted as a no-support nod toward George W. Bush.

Just as in that scenario, the Monitor’s diss on Romney amounts to a vote of no confidence. And by extension, it’s probably the natural outcome of the failure of the candidates to truly distinguish themselves from each other: Since there’s nothing to commend any one of them, the paper goes after the obvious (and close to local) negative target.