Mitt Romney as the Kandi Man

The religion issue was such a huge thing in the primaries that Romney had to make a special speech about how his religion would inform his presidency, much like Obama did regarding his race. Romneys mormonism is what freaked out Republicans but im sure there are others like you that disagreed with how he managed his businesses, but that was his major strength to many other Republicans.

Obama stole the GOP’s base. Thats how he won. He reflected more of moderate Christian values than McCain did. Palin was the thing that tipped the scale all the way to the left. Nominating Palin without vetting her was a phenomenal failure by the McCain camp. I dont think people voted for Obama because they wanted “free stuff”, his ideas were more nuanced and made more sense than McCains and people are sick of being treated like retards. they can actually think for themselves and dont parse every argument into black and white the way republicans want. Obama spoke of unity, of being all-inclusive which resonated with the people while republicans wanted to legislate their morality on the masses while being intolerant and discriminatory towards minorities, gays, and others.

Basically the GOP let the right-wing whackjobs run the party instead of the fiscal, moderate conservatives. They thought they could counter Obama by moving further and further to the right, and they lost because of it. McCain needed a Powell to run with, not some young ditzy governor with no experience from alaska being a heartbeat away from the presidency with the oldest candidate to ever seek the office. Their strength was experience and they pissed it down the toilet by nominating Palin.