Horse Shiite. I know of no conservatives who stayed home. While it is true support for Romney was tepid at best, but there is no way I believe conservatives stayed home in the numbers oft stated here..
The numbers don't lie. Yes, politically motivated voters came out and voted with a vengeance, but turnout was lower overall in Republican areas. There are a lot of voters who simply weren't inspired to come to the polls. We saw white turnout down, while black turnout went up. There was a real drop off from 2004 numbers when we won with Bush on the ticket. As I said, for whatever faults Bush had, he and his team got the base out in record numbers. We haven't seen that in 2008 and 2012 because we've had candidates that basically assumed the base would just show up while they go get the independents. That approach fails every time it is tried.