I believe the term that they are using is "I wouldn't be caught dead associating with him." Easy mistake to make.
I don’t know about that. There’s a lot of buyer’s remorse out there over not electing Romney in ‘12, with polls showing that in a do-over he’d beat Obama by close to 10 points.
That’s something that GOP candidates can, should, and hopefully are leveraging this year to build upon their electoral bases.
That doesn’t mean that Romney is the best or right candidate for 2016. He’s not. He won’t be running against Obama but against someone else (possibly Hillary) in a completly different environment. So running on 2012 buyer’s remorse won’t be effective. Assuming that the eventual Dem candidate will effectively separate themself from Obama, it might even be a detriment.
But that doesn’t mean that we should turn our backs on an effective way to turn out additional pro-GOP votes this year just because we don’t like the guy and hate the idea of him running again.