Romney is just a victim of the rabid hatred the right has for Obama. The right was actually convinced that Obama was so terrible that anyone could beat him. ANYONE. In fact, one of my pasty co-workers bragged that he'd vote for a stray dog and he'd make a better president than Obama.
So feeling that Obama was automatically finished, Romney felt all he had to do was get further to the right than all the other primary candidates so he could get the nomination, once he got the nomination he'd be a shoe-in for president. The problem was that getting to the right of all the other candidates was no small task as the Republicans got to a point that they were against anything Obama was for. If Obama said people should eat sitting at a table, literally you would have seen millions of conservatives instantly switch to eating while laying down on the floor. So the Republicans became goofy and stupid crazy in their rabid hatred trying to oppose anything Obama was for, even if it was originally a conservative idea. These buffoons literally contorted themselves into pretzels trying to oppose Obama.
After the primaries it was pretty much a wrap. NO way the independents were going to support that silliness. Btw, special shout-out to Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin for putting the icing on the cake of crazy and helping seal Obama's victory. I also think Obama had a secret plant inside the Romney campaign feeding them false polling numbers.