Don't buy what the media is selling.
It's pretty obvious that the Democrats cheated six ways from Sunday in Wisconsin. Scott Walker stomped Barrett in June; 5 months later Romney stomped Scott Walker's vote totals.
Strangely, Obama in turn stomped Romney's vote totals. Romney's totals were around Walker's totals, averaging 5-10% higher. Obama's totals averaged 40-50% higher than Barrett's in every county. GOTF.
Of course the Dems cheated. But they’re pretty crafty and they cheated by only the margin they needed to win - which wasn’t very much.
The next time around, we have to turn out our vote more effectively (as I said, I watched union-driven busloads of grannies from rural black churches pulling up outside of early voting here in Florida) and we also simply have to convince more people to vote for us.
We had a limp-noodle candidate with no principles, and while he had one flash of intelligence and agressiveness during the first debate, he could never sustain it because it wasn’t really him. And when he picked Ryan and got a bump (including from me), then he promptly gagged Ryan and did not let him get his message out because it might have sounded too conservative. Ryan wanted to go and preach his message of economic empowerment even to the black neighborhoods, and Romney wouldn’t let him do it.
Romney killed his primary competitors with vicious personal campaigns, but he was meek as a lamb against Obama.
So yes, cheating was a factor...but if we had had a candidate good enough to vote for, the Dems couldn’t have cheated so easily.