This whole Mormon thing is just spin to make the majority of social conservatives look like the reason for Romney’s loss when in fact evangelicals voted in higher percentage and even absolute numbers for him than for McCain.
Mormons are as a group socially conservative, regardless of what one might think of their underlying theology. If Romney had been in the least like the majority of his fellow Mormons in this regard he would have been a stronger candidate in the eyes of social conservatives on the whole.
As it stood, nominating the one Republican candidate who advocated government-run healthcare was very constraining, as was the fact that Romney could have and was fairly easily tarred via Bain Capital with being somehow associated with the ongoing financial crisis.
Would he have been better than Obama? No doubt, but that is a very low bar. That could be said of virtually anyone to the right of Che Guevara.
It’s also too easy to dismiss it all as being the result of Romney winning a fair primary election. Some of us do recall the shenanigans in Virginia and elsewhere that led to Romney victory in state primaries. It wasn’t all the result of an unbiased process.
No process is perfect, but if somebody hasn't seen a nominee that they like for a quarter century, it's more likely to me that it's because primary voters prefer what they got over other available alternatives than that one family has had its fingers on the scales for a generation.
Much of what gets said about money in politics is true, as is a lot of what gets said about the Establishment or elite and its machinations, but it's also true that nowadays the Republican party, GOP primary voters, and the country as a whole aren't as conservative as some people assume. And it's also true that good candidates don't come along in every election. The ideal conservative candidate who could win just hasn't put in an appearance for some time.
One more problem is that social conservatives and economic conservatives (or religious conservatives and libertarian/secular conservatives) don't like to vote for each other's favorite candidates. Another is that many of them don't always vote for the candidates who are supposed to be their favorites, but instead go for the candidate who seems most likely to win. The line between the moderate non-conservatives and moderate conservatives on the one hand and the social conservatives and libertarian conservatives on the other, is a lot more porous than many people assume.
A strong candidate like Ronald Reagan could pull voters from all groups, but the candidate who appears to be the strongest in any election cycle will also draw voters from camps that many people would assume would never give their support. A moderate candidate who appears to be strongest will get a lot of votes from self-described conservatives that candidates perceived to be on the fringe won't win.
But my original point was that one can't pin Dole or Romney or McCain on the Bushes.