Character study
THE SIGNS were the sign of what was to come for Mitt Romney in New Hampshire.
Twenty-four hours before New Hampshire voted, most of the signs in the heart of Wolfeboro, N.H., carried the name of John McCain, not of Mitt Romney - even though Romney owns a lavish home in this quaint resort community.
Perhaps Romney's neighbors still harbored resentment from the days when he was first elected governor of Massachusetts and put up a security perimeter around his lakefront property. The community disliked the notion of an imperial governor and the local police asked him to take it down.
Or, perhaps they just didn't like the kind of presidential campaign Romney ran in their state.
Yesterday, Romney lost the New Hampshire Republican primary to John McCain. This defeat is a more serious blow than last week's second-place finish in Iowa; his own neighbors essentially rejected his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee.
The signs in New Hampshire pointed away from Romney and toward McCain for awhile. In December, The Concord Monitor published an extraordinary editorial, which stated, "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 Romney campaign dismissed it as the wacky opinion of a liberal editorial board. But a deluge of New Hampshire newspapers, including the conservative Union Leader, backed McCain.
Romney's calculated transformation from moderate gubernatorial candidate to ultra-conservative presidential candidate hurt him with New Hampshire voters. He spent millions of dollars attacking McCain for his support of immigration reform, but that negative onslaught backfired, too. Finally, Romney tried to sell himself as the candidate of change, but he had changed so much already, that was hardly a boost for his campaign.
"We thought we knew New Hampshire . . . but now we really know New Hampshire," Romney said during last night's concession speech.
It turns out that New Hampshire knew Romney better than he knew New Hampshire, and voters didn't like what they knew.
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com. 