NH RINOS GET A SMOOCH

Once again we have an example of a liberal columnist who purports to know something about New Hampshire (and he should as he lives nearby and has visited often...hell, he may even live here, I don't really know), Thomas Oliphant of the Globe giving us an example of Republicans who are going to swing New Hampshire to Kerry.

This drift of moderates away from Bush was epitomized by still another event last week that wasn't supposed to be suffused with politics, but this is New Hampshire in election season. It was the Business and Industrial Association's annual dinner where its "lifetime achievement award" was presented to a true pillar of moderation her, prominent attorney Malcolm McLane.
The Bush surrogate at the affair was chief of staff Andrew Card, who gave the same robotic recitation of "the president in crisis mode" he has been giving for three years. After Card left, McLane brought the nonpartisan crowd to its feet with a typically concise statement that he intended to support Kerry and John Edwards.

For decades, he and his wife, Susan, a tower of liberal Republicanism in the Legislature, have typified the state's vital center. Susan McLane switched parties a decade ago after supporting Bush's dad in 1988. She and her daughter, Manchester attorney Annie McLane Kuster, have published a touching book about the family and its efforts to cope with Susan McLane's experience with the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

As Malcolm McLane puts it, the family has never changed its politics, it is the Republicans' big tent that has moved, not them. I suspect they are at least a metaphor, possibly a harbinger.

The man doesn't even understand how he contradicts himself when he describes Susan McLane as a Liberal, and yet part of the "state's vital center". Excuse me? If one is a Liberal, one is not in the center, one is to the left! I am not in the center, either. Of course since I am a Conservative, Oliphant would never think to characterize me as part of some "vital center" in the state's politics. Good grief!