I guess people can blame Dubya for anything and everything. Truth be told - “Conservatives” as a group helped get Obama elected President. They could not agree on a conservative candidate so there was a 3-way conservative split that resulted in the nomination of a RINO named Mitt Romney ... and the rest is history.
Until conservatives can unite around a single candidate, defeat the RINOs and lead the Republican Party then I don’t see us leading the country. In fact until we do that I don’t think we deserve to run the country.
What’s worse, they can’t even agree on what even constitutes conservative either. It’s a bunch of demagoguery that gets more exclusive and polar by the month, or day, but that’s the problem: since so many people “don’t belong”, who is there to be on the side of ours.
Romney used manipulation of the rules in key primary states, backstabbed others, and infiltrated the McCsin/Palin campaign in the *prior* election to neutralize Sarah.
Perry is not a conservative (e.g. Gardasil).
Even with all that, it was the mushy middle that didn't go for Romney: "binders full of women" and not going for the jugular in the third debate with the Bamster.