Get out of your bubble, leave your echo chamber.
It's very difficult to unseat a sitting president. Even as unpopular as W was in 2004, he was reelected. Obama was well liked and he's the first black president of the United States. That's not Romney's fault.
Voters still blamed BUSH for the state of the economy more than Obama. That's not Romney's fault. Obama ran a campaign of fear, begged for more time to fix things and won. It's that simple.
Grassroots conservatives failed to produce a nominee with FOUR YEARS to coalesce behind one against Romney for this election. Suck it up.
Grassroots conservatives lost very winnable US Senate seats over the past two cycles that would've flipped the Senate to the GOP: Akin? Mourdock? O'Donnell? Angle?
Akin and Mourdock losing 300K-500K votes from Romney's margins of victory in those states is on THEM and "grassroots conservatives" who foisted them on the electorates in those states. That's not Romney's fault.
Why are you blaming pollsters and analysts? They weren't the ones who stayed home because Romney was a Mormon... don't tell me that wasn't a factor; read the posts from Freepers who didn't vote for him because of that.
I don't see much criticism leveled at the pick of Paul Ryan here. There's NO evidence he helped the ticket and plenty of reason to think he harmed it. While I like his willingness to stick his neck out with proposals as budget chair, I always thought it was a dangerous choice. I hoped the chemistry between Romney and Ryan might come through. On his own, Ryan came off as scripted, insincere, wonkish, distant and even unlikable. He was NOT ready for big stage. In the end, clearly he was a liability, he was hidden by the campaign in safe states.
Actually Obama lost 10 million voters. And I bet many people that voted for him, held their nose, as did many people who voted for Romney.