Evan McMorris-Santoro March 7, 2011, 11:22 AM

The leading conservative newspaper in Massachusetts is not buying Mitt Romney 2012. At least that’s the takeaway from this weekend’s coverage of Romney’s New Hampshire speech, which most in the press corps have viewed as the starting gun for Romney’s second presidential run.

Romney, of course, was governor of The Bay State from 2003 to 2007 and highlighted his time in office with his signature on a state health care reform plan that looks awfully like the one President Obama signed into law last year. That fact has gotten Romney into more than a little hot water with the tea party faithful on the national stage, who want to know nothing from his mandates and required coverage options.

Romney’s been backing away from the Massachusetts health care plan for a while now, and his speech in New Hampshire this weekend included yet another attempt.

Here’s what the Boston Herald had to say about how Romney’s health care shift:

From the piece by Herald columnist Howie Carr:

Mitt keeps trying to explain how it seemed like such a good idea at the time. But Romneycare follows him around like a dark cloud over his head, just the way Chappaquiddick haunted Ted Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign. If only those rascally Democrats hadn’t ruined it, Mitt keeps saying, as the crowd uneasily makes its way toward the exits.

No, Mitt says, really, I mean it, seriously, please, come back …

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, “The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

2012 Presidential Primaries, Mitt Romney