Palin fired up the base and brought in the $$$$$$$$
No way Romney would have done that especially the evangelicals
Romney would have fired up the Mormon machine, which has considerable energy. And he would have eliminated the need to bring in $$$$$$$$, as his personal spare change dwarfs any money Palin drew in (not to mention his friends’ personal spare change — he doesn’t exactly move in small-town hocky mom circles). The only downside to Romney as VP candidate is that he would have tended to make McCain look weak. Though maybe not as weak as choosing Palin made McCain look, by a very different mechanism.