Because none of them stood out that much from the other.
Sure they did. We had some very emotional debates about each and every one of them on this website. I remember that you were involved in some of them.
The point is not that Rove and Co. stuck us with Romney. Conservatives are purists by nature, and many of us got caught up in the flavor of the month when Mittens was never polling above 25% and the nomination was there for the taking. I recognized Gingrich's many flaws, but I settled on him and tried to get others to see the logic in doing so, as opposed to first Bachmann, then Cain, then Santorum, none of whom ever had a chance of winnning. All they did was take votes away from the one legitimate challenger. Now were're stuck with Romney, and I'm being as enthusiastic about the man as I can be. The point in politics is to understand that you never get everything you want and do what it takes to win.
Three candidates were lifelong Conservative Republicans. Every single one of the other 13 were not.
There were former Democrats, current Democrats, probably future Democrats, Libertarians, Democrat donors, etc. Some had been elected to office; others had been involved in campaigns for other than Republican purposes.
So, it was 13 to 3, and one of the 13 couldn't break 22% most of the time, but there were those others who managed to snag enough votes to make the 3 lifelong folks come up a bit short of a resoundingly large number, and at the same time they managed to make the 22% tallies look serious.
Obviously the Republican party has some difficulty in controlling its brand name ~
If we'd had but the three lifelong Republican Conservatives running we'd picked a leader by late April and that'd been that. The other 13 should have been dumped at the get go.