Pragmatically, it may not have been the best run campaign, but he never did anything that was dishonorable or disgraceful. When you think back to those first debates, when he defended and lauded all those conservatives on the stage, and when he only finally defended himself after taking 3 weeks of negative advertising in IOWA from Willard...
He is not the same man he was 20 years. And most people are so blinded by their hate and judgmentalness, they can't see that...
The blind have led America into the ditch...
Unfortunately negative ads work and Romney was armed to the teeth.
Gingrich earned the lead before Iowa by being positive and inspirational but then Romney picked his moment to attack when he saw the whites of the eyes with Iowa weeks away.
Then add Ron Paul doing the same. No one could survive that.