In New Hampshire Newspaper, Gingrich Gets Coveted and Ferocious Supporter - Muskie destroyed his candidacy by breaking down and appearing to cry at paper's offices

From The New York Times:

Newt Gingrich may not have much money to spend on advertising here. But he does have Joseph W. McQuaid, the publisher of New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, The Union Leader. And Mr. McQuaid will happily spill barrel after barrel of ink trying to tear every other candidate down.    

 “Our job is to say, ‘Here’s our guy. Here’s why he’s the best, and why all the others are the worst,’ ” Mr. McQuaid said in a recent interview. He had just finished a front-page editorial for Sunday’s paper that ripped into Mitt Romney, who leads Mr. Gingrich by double digits in the polls. “Romney may be the WORST candidate,” he wrote.       

“There’s no reason to be subtle,” Mr. McQuaid said.

Subtle is not how many people would describe The Union Leader or Mr. McQuaid. Mr. Romney is “plastic” and “desperate,” he said. Ron Paul is a dangerous elf from the “Island of Misfit Toys.” And Rick Santorum? “Is he running for something?” Mr. McQuaid said, flashing an impish grin.

Mr. McQuaid and his newspaper are the Siberian tigers of political journalism: ferocious and endangered. At a time when editorials and newspapers themselves are playing a smaller role in American politics, the brash and biting Union Leader still commands the attention and respect of the country’s most prominent politicians. Every four years, they flatter and pay homage to the newspaper in hope that they can secure what remains one of the most coveted endorsements of the presidential election.

People have feared and loathed The Union Leader ever since the days of the curmudgeonly William Loeb III, who bought the paper in the 1940s and bullied a generation of politicians with vitriolic front-page editorials. Mr. Loeb headlined an article about Henry A. Kissinger’s appointment as secretary of state with an anti-Semitic slur. Edmund S. Muskie became “Moscow Muskie” and a flip-flopper. Mr. Muskie destroyed his candidacy by breaking down and appearing to cry while denouncing Mr. Loeb at a news conference outside the paper’s offices.

 The newspaper’s average in picking winners suggests that Mr. Gingrich should not start writing his victory speech just yet. Though it endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and John McCain in 2008, Steve Forbes got the newspaper’s nod in 2000, and Pat Buchanan in 1992. Americans never got to see a President Pierre du Pont (endorsed in 1988) or a President Samuel Yorty (1972).