This one will be kicked around by political scientists for a long time. It was a weird dynamic which makes it difficult to draw any clear conclusions IMHO. But I do agree that a more appealing candidate would have made some difference.
If Newt, Steele and the party establishment would have shut up in the beginning, Hoffman might have pulled it off ...
I don’t buy conspiracies and never have. I think the message here is that just as there are perhaps 5-10% of hard core pro-lifers who will not vote for any candidate even if he is 99% pure on other issues, so too there are a bunch of RINOs for whom abortion is their holy grail-—they want all the benies of GOP stability, national security, and financial soundness, without any of the social discipline.