Actually, he did better than Gingrich. Won and placed better in more contests. At the time, freepers infuriatingly failed to take notice of this because Todd Palin endorsed Newt so gosh darn it they were for Newt and the fantasy narrative that he could master debate his way to beating Obama (he would have lost worse than Romney and cost us House seats).
But yes, Dickie’s campaign sucked (though not as bad as Newt’s, he destroyed himself and any chance he had by attacking Romney FROM THE LEFT on Bain Capital). He was overly fixated on being the moral issues guy and generally boring and flat. I voted for him by default because I loathe Gingrich and Ron Paul, who were the only other alternatives to Romney.
Santorum was another ego-tripper. Gingrich was the last conservative standing, but when Santorum quit, he did a screw-you to conservatives and endorsed Romney.