Because the alternatives were even worse. In January 2012 we had no great choices. There's no reason to believe that the only two viable conservative candidates that survived Iowa and New Hampshire, Gingrich and Santorum, would have done any better than Romney and many reasons to believe they would have done worse.
Romney was and is better looking than Gingrich. This is the kind of thing that drives serious political activists all across the political landscape crazy, and it matters far more than ideas. Gingrich is too troll-like to be president, Christie is too fat, Ron Paul is too goofy and Dennis Kucinich is too short. That's true even before you start looking at their ideas.
Santorum was OK as far as appearance, but his mannerisms were awkward and dorky. Admittedly Romney suffered from this dorky problem as well, but he had other advantages over Santorum.
When two candidates who are well matched in superficial factors go head to head issues become important, and on the issues Santorum's focus and strong stands on social issues were wrong for this campaign. On defense Santorum was too much of a hawk and on spending he was too liberal. Santorum's best issue was his firm opposition to Obamacare, but that wasn't enough.
As for Gingrich, he had more problems than his appearance. While he was probably the most intelligent candidate running, and the best debater, his personal life was a train wreck. The religious conservative voters he absolutely needed to win were unimpressed by his series of marriages ending in adultery. In his personal life Romney the Massachusetts liberal was far more conservative than Gingrich the southern conservative.
But the collapse of Cain and the failure of Gingrich point to something worse than their personal flaws. With personal morality declining across the board we may be approaching the point where there are almost no viable candidates who haven't cheated on their wives, two timed on their girlfriends, paid for abortions, or dragged their wives to swinger's clubs (we can thank Ryan's hijinks in that department for Senator Obama's rise).
Of course it would be possible to adopt a more European attitude towards these things, which would give us more candidates to choose from.
This presents any conservative voter with an uncomfortable choice. Do you stand against the moral decline by rejecting any candidate who is less than pure or do you support the person who can win even if they're a scoundrel?
But back to Romney's candidacy. As badly as Romney did it could have been worse. We'd be in a weaker position today if Santorum had been nominated and lost in a landslide. Based on his weakness in the primaries that would have been the outcome.
Gingrich might have done better than Santorum, but could he have done better than the well funded, moderate, taller, better looking Mitt Romney?
Doubtful.
“Because the alternatives were even worse. In January 2012 we had no great choices. There’s no reason to believe that the only two viable conservative candidates that survived Iowa and New Hampshire, Gingrich and Santorum, would have done any better than Romney and many reasons to believe they would have done worse.”
Again, if someone had come to you in February and told you that Romney would get fewer votes than John McCain - would you have believed him?
The analysis you are basing this assumption on - was 100 percent false. We were told that Romney was electable. All the FReepers hollering that Romney would be a disaster - they were right.
So, I have to take that as evidence that what they saw in Romney way back then - that they were right and the folks telling us that Romney was electable were wrong.
As for Newt - Santorum kicked his ass in the primaries. ‘Nuff said.