BUT WHAT WILL MANOLO THINK OF THEM?:

Does the Mitt Fit? (ANDREW FERGUSON, March 7, 2007, NY Sun)

"Oh no, no, no," said the energetic young man when I asked him his name and where he was from. He was working the crowd at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

"Just say I'm a public-spirited person with an important warning."

Which is?

He raised a bony finger.

"Beware Mitt Romney!"

And then he was gone, vanished in the labyrinthine exhibition hall filled with booths for the National Tax Limitation Committee, the Leadership Institute -- "For Conservatives Who Want to Win!" -- stophernow.com, Working Families for Wal-Mart, and dozens of others.

All the young man left me with was a pair of foam slippers, flip-flops the lurid color of a crossing guard's vest. These were meant to illustrate the former Massachusetts governor's growing reputation as -- you'll never guess -- a flip-flopper.

"Romney: Where will he stand in 2009?" I read from the heel.

The fine print told me that in 1992, Mr. Romney voted for Paul Tsongas, a Democrat, for president.

Worse, it reported that in 1994, running against Senator Kennedy, Mr. Romney bragged, "I was an Independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I am not trying to return to Reagan-Bush" -- a repudiation that most CPAC attendees would rank up there with the apostle Peter's in the wee hours of Good Friday.

And, finally, Mr. Romney in 2006: "Romney calls Ronald Reagan his 'hero'."

All in all, this was one informative piece of foam rubber.