I felt Romney was a terrible choice for the Republican party. Then again, who wasn't? The party is going through a schism and while they were trying to retain their command on the population so that they have a chance of winning an election they needed some well tailored candidate that could attract the new vocal extreme conservatives and provide a level of moderation. Of course that's kind of hard to do and while everyone felt that Romney, a strongly moderate republican, would be the most likely person to beat Obama under normal circumstances.
With right extremism they risked loosing the election so the Republican party fought hard to find another suitable candidate. After that not panning out it went back to Romney, but in order to appease the new constituency Romney had to "appear" more conservative than he actually was. Which is why he ran a campaign full of lies, ambiguity, and switching positions. It was a rough campaign but it kept the extreme right around, but not enough of the moderate in order to win the election as that group became more disgusted with the way the campaign was run.
Essentially the Republican party prevented the emergence of a conservative third party, the Tea Party. While still a pseudo party, they never really formed in the way they could have in the Republican party wasn't holding on to their constituents for dear life. The thing is though, the Republican party could very well be on its way out anyway, especially after loosing this election. Sometime, maybe not next election, maybe not the election after that, but there is a good chance that Texas will become a Democratic state and that will make it ever so difficult for a Republican to be elected as president. While that in itself won't destroy the party per se but it will shift the political climate. Unless the Republicans adapt to the new demographic of the country, of course. There still is the extreme right movement though, and there might still be a chance for a sustainable multi party situation.
Of course things could always change with the democratic party and there is always the factor of large sums of money in our election process.
Before the PS3 everyone was nice to me :(
