Here were his problems:
1. The media. In the tank, never seen it worse, reporting non existent "gaffes" for Romney all the time, not reporting on things that would have sunk their preferred candidate. It was sick.
2. The electorate is no longer the electorate of 1980, it's close to 50% that have no comprehension of the negatives of big government, close to 50% who are either takers or those effete white (supposedly intelligent) liberals who are so stupid they are willing to sell themselves and their children in to slavery. These people were not offended by the insanity of the Bambi ads, programs, and positions, they actually like them (free birth control!). In 1980 they would have been laughed off the stage like the McGovernites, today they win elections.
3. The circular firing squad where all of us took out our decent candidates.
4. Newt started the negative ads about Bain, Bambi captitalized on them, continued them, and ran them over and over in the swing states, and they stuck for the duration(see # 2 above).
5. Not enough purist conservatives and evangelicals understood the stakes here. Staying home (believing or being cowed by the ads of # 4 above) was suicide, but they were too inwardly focused to understand that simple fact. Now they will mutter, sputter and bitch about the decline of our country that is inevitable, the destruction that will take away everything they claimed they loved. Bambi, and his minions (the face of genuine evil) won, and they are now free to continue to destroy everything we love. We will be forced to pay for abortions, forced to pay for free loaders, forced to destroy our military, pay higher taxes, unionize our businesses, and watch the acceleration of moral decay. Congratulations to the purists, they won, and don't even know what they lost.
I did not like Mitt in the primaries, to say I thought little of him is way too nice, I simply thought he would be a horrible candidate. I hoped for Palin and Newt, or Perry, or anyone more conservative than Mitt. I honestly think each one of them would have been blown off the stage by the issues mentioned above, it would not have been even close. In the end, I reluctantly am dragged in to believing that Romney was a decent candidate, maybe the best one available, and that we have found the enemy and it is us.
The problem was largely with the fact that Obama lost eight million voters and Romney failed to pick up any signficant number of them. He actually came in with a lower total of voters than McCain in 2008 - and McCain was functioning in an epic bad year for Republicans whereas Romney had a Carteresque opponent - and thought just running against Obama would suffice. But he offered little to the voters leaving Obama, so they simply did not vote.
The recipe for success was demonstrated in 2010. Grassroots, vigorous conservatism that drew in the dissastified Obama swing voters by offering a robust alternative to both progressives and wampy RINO moderation. And the response of the GOP-E? Treat the Tea Party as unwanted relations. And that led directly to their loss. The Tea Party in the end even tried to help push that tried-and-failed jalopy over the finish line - but it was too late.
The trick is not to be more like Democrats. The GOP loses when it tries that. The trick is to state clear conservative values - and MEAN it. Romney never meant a word of it, so his words had no attractive value to the crossover voters of 2010.
Because as decent as Romney may be, everything about his career smells "finance guy....Wall Street deal broker".
Take a Mitt Romney and subtract the personal integrity, and you've got the exact type that brought us all the bubbles, Too Big To Fail and the bailouts.
You can be rich and still win Main Street's approval if you are a hands on businessman who delivers products and services. Not a contract wrangler who makes his millions by transaction fees on paper moving around.
And yes, it was Newt who first attacked Romney on the Bain issue, and I'll always think the less of him for that. It was way, way beneath him.