As predicted, the Star Tribune’s new-look editorial page has passed on endorsing in the Madia-Paulsen Third Congressional District race, but picks El Tinklenberg over Michele Bachmann in the Sixth District

In the Third, the Strib swoons over Independence Party candidate David Dillon, but ultimately writes him off because he won’t vote for unbalanced budgets. They ding Madia for “wide but not deep” knowledge and misrepresenting the Employee Free Choice Act, a pro-unionization effort the editorial page opposes.

Paulsen gets the worst of it, generating “significant reservations” — “answers on energy, health care and foreign policy lacked depth, detail and vision.”

In th Sixth, editorialists avoid nuclear outrage by picking Tinklenberg. They weigh in for the first time on you-know-what; Bachmann’s “anti-America” paradigm “adds to the list of bizarre incidents and statements that undercut her credibility as a political leader.”