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RE :” Bush liked to say that he was a “different kind of Republican,” that he was a “compassionate conservative.” I still hate that formulation. Imagine if someone said, “I’m a different kind of Catholic (or Jew, or American, etc.): I’m a compassionate Catholic.” The insinuation was that conservatives who disagreed with him and his “strong-government conservatism” were somehow lacking in compassion.
As a candidate, Bush talked endlessly about how tough a job single mothers have and scolded his fellow conservatives for failing to see that “family values don’t end at the Rio GAs president, he said that “when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” According to compassionate conservatives, reflexive anti-statism on the right is foolish, for there are many important — and conservative — things the state can do right.
Compassionate conservatism struck me as a surrender to liberal assumptions about the role of the government in our lives. A hallmark of Great Society liberalism is the idea that an individual’s worth as a human being is correlated to his support for expansions of the entitlement state.”

Oh brother. Guess what? By 2008 GWB would have lost to O in a landslide. His compassionate conservative strategy was a short term one and those single Moms and Hispanics he got votes from in 2004 would have voted against him in 2008.

Romney's problems were of his own makings, standing for nothing (except what appeared to be rich guys like himself) blaming the voters instead of Obama. He was great at going after Republicans and the voters but he treated O with kid gloves.
He failed to come up with a convincing argument that his policies would help the voters that he needed. He was the wrong candidate for sure. And Akin and CO didn't help either.

Lets not learn the wrong lessons here.

Still blaming Akin? Sorry, I believe he could have been rehabilitated, if Republicans had not cut and run on him. He lost by less than some of the RINOs did (such as Allen in VA and Mack in FL).

Why do you not also rag on Allen and Mack?

If Romney faced the same percentage demographics as Reagan, he would have won by an even bigger landslide than RR.