NEW YORK (AP) – The New York Post endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday, calling him an “untried candidate” but a preferable alternative to the newspaper’s home state senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton and her husband, the former president, “stand for DejGa vu all over again – a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency,” the paper wrote.

“Does America really want to go through all that once again? It will – if Senator Clinton becomes president.”

The Post, a scrappy tabloid known for its colorful headlines and conservative editorial bent, mercilessly skewered both Clintons during the former president’s two terms in the White House and Hillary Clinton’s first run for Senate in New York in 2000.

Since then, the couple have worked to reach a detente with the paper and its owner, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch held a fundraiser for Sen. Clinton’s re-election campaign in 2006 and appeared as a panelist at the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual gathering of rich and powerful organized by Bill Clinton to help fight poverty, disease and global warming.

The Post endorsed Sen. Clinton’s re-election bid in 2006, calling her a “pretty good senator.”

But the paper took a sharply different tone when weighing her prospects as a presidential candidate.

“A return to Senator Clinton’s cattle-futures deal, Travelgate, Whitewater, Filegate, the Lincoln Bedroom Fire Sale, Pardongate – and the inevitable replay of the Monica Mess? No, thank you,” the paper wrote.

Obama “has the ability to inspire,” the paper added, noting “We don’t agree much with Obama on substantive issues. But many Democrats will.”