IF JOHN EDWARDS IS THE BEST, WHO IS THE WORST CANDIDATE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT?

The first time I met Howard Dean I didn't know much about him. Because a trade organization I was part of had once donated a great sum of money to some Democratic Party committee Clinton was hawking money for, most of the Democratic presidential candidates had been calling and asking for a meeting with me. Dick Gephart I asked to leave me the hell alone and stop bothering me. Dean I invited over for breakfast. But all I knew about him was that he opposed Bush's Iraq war. I was still leaning towards Edwards when Dean came over. When he left I was a 100% Howard Dean partisan. And it was his strong stance on health care and against the insurance companies that won me over.

The latest polling from Iowa shows that John Edwards could be on the verge of pulling off a stupendous upset, sending Lieberman's protege from Illinois back to learn how to be a halfway decent senator and pitting the ultimate insider, Clinton, against someone who has learned to embrace the aspirations of real Americans, Edwards.

And according to Aaron Lewis of CBS News, Edwards has promised to take on a far worse enemy of ordinary Americans than Osama bin-Laden-- Big Insurance. After telling a story about how an insurance company tried denying a claim-- causing the death of a young woman who was entitled to coverage-- he came right out and said something that-- if you believe him-- makes him the only candidate qualified to be the peoples' president:

Edwards also told the audience of about a hundred people at the Score Pavillion in Nevada, Iowa, that it will take a fighter (i.e. him)-- and not a negotiator (i.e. Obama)-- to take on large insurance companies like CIGNA.

"Anybody who thinks that we don't have a fight in front of us is living in Never-Never Land," he said.

And if Edwards is the best, as hard as it is to pick the absolute worst, today's Concord Monitor took a good shot and came up with... Willard.

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.