I'm afraid that Romney probably got enough conservative votes to lead elitists in the GOP to conclude that they should nominate another liberal in 2016.
The nominee is most likely going to be a Governor or Senator. Elitists or no elitists, that’s the way it is. If you can find somebody like that to run, fine, he or she will have a chance at winning. If your choice is a Representative or a Pizza Company Executive, he or she won’t win, and there’s not use complaining about that.
I don’t think so. Romney may have gotten strategically thinking conservative votes (like mine) but he didn’t get the “silent base,” which doesn’t analyze the election and doesn’t even turn out to work for the candidate, but does manage to get out and vote for him.
When I worked the phones for the McCain campaign those people did turn out, but in addition to having an even worse candidate this time, we were way, way behind the times in GOTV and everything else and needed to gear up. Sadly, we didn’t improve much in this election...which we would have won just barely, but enough, if the people who had voted for McCain had turned out.
So this means that every liberal they nominate gets fewer votes and less enthusiasm.
Also, a lot of these old GOP buzzards are getting to the lying on the beach and sipping coco locos age.
Romney ran ahead of some GOP Senate candidates and behind others. It did not seem to matter whether they were conservative or not(Missouri, Indiana). Some states that went for Romney went for Senate Democrats too (MT, ND). Nevada was an exception, barely. It was a very strange election for Romney to be stuck at 47%, Republicans lost ground in the Senate, but held the House decisively (233 - 201), 53% - 47%, almost the inverse of the national presidential vote.