Actually, despite the hammering of Watergate, Ford came back almost won the 1976 election. He would have won had it not been for the pardon. The GOP made big gains in Congress in 1976.
Actually I think "loser" is apt in the sense that Ford's beliefs and republicans of his era were losers in a political way. And rightfully so. They were "democrat lite" much in the way that a ideologically bereft democratic party today is branded "republican lite". Thankfully Ford represented the end of an era. I think this article sums it up nicely.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjdjYmU3MWQyOWQ5M2I4ZDdhNjliNmM5MGQ3OGRiMWE=
"Ford, in the eyes of these feisty GOP converts, was a good and decent man, but precisely representative of this final category. A “Man of the House” who had spent almost his entire quarter century on Capitol Hill in the minority, Ford was not just an “accidental president” to these conservatives, but, worse, an accommodationist who had gotten use to Democratic domination and its attendant liberal policies.
Indeed, Ford was the sort of Chamber of Commerce Republican that dominated the congressional wing of the party in the era. Internationalist, socially moderate, and fiscally prudent, Ford embodied the good-government northeastern and midwestern party of Rockefeller, Lodge, and Vandenberg.
He was, in many ways, representative of the end of an era. His spirited and successful campaign to bat back Reagan’s insurgency marked the last stand of the moderates’ hold of the GOP. No Republican has since won the party’s nod without the backing of the conservative wing of the party."