Obama's turnout dropped, what, eight million votes? And what was Romney's turnout? Lower than McCain's in 2008.
He did not appeal to many evangelicals. He had lukewarm at best appeal to Tea Partiers, many of whom held still their nose and voted for him - but many folks otherwise drawn to the Tea Party movement did not. He had minimal crossover appeal - he never came across as a guy who could understand what middle America is going through.
He never stated a clear, principled reason why he should win, other than he wasn't Obama. And to beat the incumbent, you have to do just that, as Reagan did in 1980. In other words, he failed to win over millions of disaffected Obama voters - they simply did not vote for president.
Mitt's fault. A terrible candidate in a winnable, Jimmah Carter kind of election.
Here were his problems:
1. The media. In the tank, never seen it worse, reporting non existent "gaffes" for Romney all the time, not reporting on things that would have sunk their preferred candidate. It was sick.
2. The electorate is no longer the electorate of 1980, it's close to 50% that have no comprehension of the negatives of big government, close to 50% who are either takers or those effete white (supposedly intelligent) liberals who are so stupid they are willing to sell themselves and their children in to slavery. These people were not offended by the insanity of the Bambi ads, programs, and positions, they actually like them (free birth control!). In 1980 they would have been laughed off the stage like the McGovernites, today they win elections.
3. The circular firing squad where all of us took out our decent candidates.
4. Newt started the negative ads about Bain, Bambi captitalized on them, continued them, and ran them over and over in the swing states, and they stuck for the duration(see # 2 above).
5. Not enough purist conservatives and evangelicals understood the stakes here. Staying home (believing or being cowed by the ads of # 4 above) was suicide, but they were too inwardly focused to understand that simple fact. Now they will mutter, sputter and bitch about the decline of our country that is inevitable, the destruction that will take away everything they claimed they loved. Bambi, and his minions (the face of genuine evil) won, and they are now free to continue to destroy everything we love. We will be forced to pay for abortions, forced to pay for free loaders, forced to destroy our military, pay higher taxes, unionize our businesses, and watch the acceleration of moral decay. Congratulations to the purists, they won, and don't even know what they lost.
I did not like Mitt in the primaries, to say I thought little of him is way too nice, I simply thought he would be a horrible candidate. I hoped for Palin and Newt, or Perry, or anyone more conservative than Mitt. I honestly think each one of them would have been blown off the stage by the issues mentioned above, it would not have been even close. In the end, I reluctantly am dragged in to believing that Romney was a decent candidate, maybe the best one available, and that we have found the enemy and it is us.