The fact that Romney is a spineless RINO jellyfish, indistinguishable on paper from any liberal Democrat, was the Cause. The "hate crap" that ensued on our side was the Effect.
When and if our side finally nominates a real conservative, you'll see the sort of landslide support that topples Commie/Democrat regimes.
This is sort of the central article of faith of FR, but I assure you, it's wrong and based on wishful thinking.
A "real conservative" (as defined by the majority of FR) will lose fare worse than Romney did. Not understanding that is a symptom of being out of touch with a variety of people across the political spectrum in a variety of geographic settings.
And spare me the Reagan stuff. First, he wasn't nearly the "true conservative" that people have sort of invented memories of.
Second, key aspects of how he built his coalition (anti-Communism, "tough on crime") simply don't matter anymore.
The Soviet Union is gone - the "tough on crime" thing is a bit different. There's been a small uptick in violent crime the past couple of years, of course, but crime has still declined steeply from the beginning of the Clinton Administration till today. At the time Reagan was elected, crime was rampant, and more importantly, it was spread more widely - the white middle class had far more fear of crime than they do today (which is now even more concentrated in minority neighborhoods and is mostly minority-on-minority.) Sure, there are lurid stories posted of awful crimes on FR all the time, but the white middle class isn't nearly as terrified of crime as they were in the 1980s - in the 1980s, I had various relatives and myself burglarized, but I literally don't know a single person that's been the victim of a single crime in the past decade.
The soccer mom types in the 1980s who may have voted Republican out of fear for their own and their children's safety are now going Democratic because of gay rights and abortion.