My first presidential election was 1980. I voted Reagan. Then Reagan then Bush.
I held my nose for Bush in 1992 (from AR so knew Clinton was a joke) and would have preferred Buchanan (not any longer). Perot was a joke.
I backed Forbes in 1996 (I forgot to list Dole again above in ‘96 - he was the “electable one”).
I backed Forbes again in 2000 or Keyes. I didn’t trust another Bush.
In 2008 I was hoping Duncan Hunter could take off or I liked Guliani. I knew Fred Thompson wasn’t serious and only in it to help McCain fend off Hucksterabee.
In 2012 I was pushing Cain or Newt or Perry (bad primary campaign notwithstanding).
Since I live in TN I knew in both 2008 and 2012 the GOP candidate would win so I voted for a third party in both.
There's an expectation that presidential candidates have a certain level of experience and political skill. For a lot of voters to be a credible candidate means to be a senator, or better, a governor, preferably from a large state, who's been able to win reelection at least once.
If you can win in a large enough constituency more than once you probably have some political skill. If you're a governor you probably know something about political administration and if you're a senator, you may know something about how Washington works. To be a columnist or a publisher or a business executive or even a congressman doesn't quite cut it, nor does being a general nowadays.
A candidate like Dole or Romney might get votes in the primaries from moderate Republicans and from people who really aren't Republicans at all, but they also get votes from people who consider themselves conservatives and are looking for a candidate who could win.
"Could" in this context doesn't mean "will" or "must." It doesn't mean anybody thought Dole or Romney or McCain was a lead-pipe cinch. It means they thought such candidates had the name-recognition and experience to do better than other candidates in the race (as if any Republican could have won the White House in 1996 or 2008).
If anybody told you that those candidates were a lock to win, they told you wrong, but I suspect what they actually said was just that they stood a better chance of winning than Forbes or Buchanan or Hunter or Keyes or Cain or Gingrich. Were they wrong? Sometimes I wish we had nominated one of your guys to see if they'd win. If they didn't we could get beyond this discussion and move on to something else.