The “tired old man” had Palin, she got a lot of the GOP voters to the polls. Now, perhaps she got a lot of Dem voters to the polls as well, so it’s hard to gauge her net effect, but clearly she contributed a lot to McCain’s total.
Romney was not a good candidate, and Ryan did absolutely nothing for him as well. In 2004 W got 62 million votes. Adjusting for demographic trends, it would translate to 65-66 million votes today. Romney got 58.5 million at most.
He left 6-7 million GOP voters sitting at home, and no wonder.
And now those 7 million (along with the rest of us) are left with the expected result of that inaction...4 more years of Obama and a Democrat stranglehold on the Senate. The Dems hope that conservatives vote/not vote on pure principal in 2016 too. It's making it easy for them.