You're leaving one thing out, though, maybe because it's just speculation.
Romney said, during the primaries, "I'm not going to set my hair on fire (to appeal to conservatives)". I believe that Romney, and the Romney faction in the GOP, fear a conservative ascendancy and a sweeping conservative victory more than they fear Obama. Romney's faction never amounted to more than about 35%, but under rules that allowed a plurality "winner" (stupid, stupid, STUPID), they were strong enough to prevail.
This is partly a class problem. Mitt and his crew are just not comfortable with the NASCAR demographic. But I think it also reflects that they are in fundamental agreement with the post-1965 compromises, but believe that they are being badly implemented or that they "go too far".
We believe (I believe) that the post-1965 social and political Grand Compromise contains the seeds of its own destruction, that it CANNOT be properly implemented because it is improper to start with, that it was inevitable that it would "go too far" because that was the intent of its designers.
The problem we have (the reason I believe that Sarah could not have won) is that the People are not ready to fold the tent on the post-1965 arrangements. Politicians, at all levels except a few specific Congressional districts, must lie to the People in order to win elections.
This means that the Democrat, who can lie openly and unashamedly, will usually have an advantage over a Republican who often will be in coverup mode, with an opponent and baying media trying to "out" him as to his true beliefs and true agenda.
I voted for Gingrich, and I would have been much, MUCH happier watching him campaign against Obama. But I acknowledge that, until things get much worse, that overturning the Great Society by a direct appeal to the voters is not possible, and that, therefore, much worse is how things are going to get.
I will not criticize anyone here on FreeRepublic for their support of any particular candidate in the Republican primaries, but Newt Gingrich would have been a complete disaster for the GOP. For one thing, he hadn't even been a face on the American political scene for more than a decade before he crawled out from under a rock somewhere and announced that he was running for President in 2012. And it's not as if he had spent 10+ years off on his own running a business or doing something else productive with his time, either. He was a Beltway lobbyist for all those years -- which meant that he was part of the problem in Washington.
One of the best quotes I ever heard during the 2012 political campaign season was from a producer on Don Imus' radio show: "Jerry Sandusky will be a guest on Sesame Street before Newt Gingrich wins a presidential election."