I hate these candidates who get in the race just to muddy the waters. They willing are used to bait and switch people who are not aware of the game plays...and to cover the flanks of other candidates....making it difficult for the average voter to determine who is really running the ball and who is just setting up another player to take it for the touchdown.
In this Primary it was evident the GOP was to keep Romney from being criticized, they accomplished that, and ready to take the ball for the touch down........where people got distracted is by those candidates being used by the GOP to run the ball for a time...and the media's cooperation in framing the race accordingly.
Romney certainly didn't win because of who he is...he only had to stay on the sidelines while the party, the Obama press, and his money took each candidate out one by one.
The voter took the bait and ran with it...and we saw that right here on FR.
So the fact is we lost....it's not surrender...it's facing the reality and moving ahead to what we can do to shut them down.
That's as dispassionately accurate an assessment as I've seen. Exactly correct.