Maybe Romney shouldn’t have been the nominee, but nobody that ran would have done any better. Rick Perry probably had a better message and all three legs of the stool, but he probably should have waited until he was done with the pain meds before he jumped in. Now he is damaged permanently. Santorum had the social conservative leg well entrenched, but like Huckabee, has a poor record on the budget. Team Obama would have had a field day, and he also would have lost the “woman” vote by about 65-35.
I do agree with that assessment, and I probably said as much a few times here on FreeRepublic at the time. Not only that, but some of those candidates would have been a complete disaster (Gingrich, for example). I like your analogy of the three-legged stool, too.