Romney made his share of mistakes, but consider the following:
1. The media.
2. The new demographics of the 47%
3. The corruption already in place from the stimulus to the unions and the Acorn types.
The media reported perfectly good things Romney said as gaffes, and reported the dems as near perfect. They constantly repeated the lie that the economy was getting better, it was Bush's fault anyway, and that even so no one could have done anything. They never. once. reported. Benghazi. Not ever. They never reported on Fast and Furious. Not once. They never reported on the crony capitalism Chicago thug way. Not Once.
The new demographics: How do you win when virtually half the country are now takers? Who do they vote for, Santa Clause, or the guy who wants you to be an entrepreneur and work hard to get the American dream?
The stimulus slush fund paid for all those voters to come out. Free stuff uber alles.
you add to that the stupid purist jack asses who wouldn't vote to take out Bambi, and voila! Loss.
I'm sorry, there is no way anyone in the field, not Newt, not Palin, not Perry, nor Bachmann, not Santorum even gets close considering how the deck was stacked. How in the world would any of them gotten close? Splain please, and it will be easy to show how that same machine would have simply destroyed them, each one.
Any normal candidate would have beaten Carter 2 during this almost depression.
Mitt was just what freerepublic had said he was all along, a disaster of epic proportions. No wonder JR was so anti-Romney, until desperation had him call for a truce in banning the romneybots.
Romney was so unpalatable that he couldn’t even beat Carter 2, he was the disaster that conservatives had said he would be since he was telling us that William Weld was his political soul master and that he did not support Reagan.
Who thought that a Massachusetts governor booted out of office with 34% approval and rejected for reelection, was the goof ball to make the GOP presidential candidate.
When the continual cascade of No Good, Very Bad Polling Data continued unabated regardless, said maladroits -- rather than dealing forthrightly with the increasingly dire reality of their candidate's situation -- actively CHOSE to relocate, en masse, to a happy, magical la-la land of talking bunny make-believe. (E.g. "unskewedpolls.com"; "Lunch Alerts!" featuring bucktoothed wish-casting from Dick Morris; etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.)
... and now, today: rather than sacking up, like adults, and finally admitting that their cherished baseline assumptions ("Sacrifice the Conservative Base for 'Moderates'"; "You Really CAN Beat a Socialist with Socialist Lite!"; etc.) might have been, just maybe, wrong a teeny tiny little... they simply throw their hands up in the air, and huff exasperatedly: "Well, then, nobody could have won, darn it!"
Never, ever again will you (or I) live to witness such a perfect storm of mulish, blinkered GOP-e electoral incompetence and insanity as we've been treated to, these past twelve months or so.
God willing.