Better Romney Running Mate

Anyway, studies have indicated how little the choice of a vice-presidential candidate matters, *even with someone as controversial as Palin in 2008.*

It's hard to see this now considering what a joke she's become but Palin was not actually a bad choice at all at the time. People saw her as edgy, unconventional, a "straight talker"--and she even managed to get some interest, for a time, from the "other side". John McCain was simply a particularly atrocious candidate, himself. It had nothing to do with SP.
 
Nothing would change as you would still have Romney deliberately throwing the contest.

Wait, what? Romney was convinced up until the votes were rolling in -- along with Conservatives -- that his victory was going to happen. To get candid, this is because of only listening to the echo chamber. The American Conservative movement came to fully believe everything it was saying and only listened to it's own ranks, resulting in a distorted assumption of what was going on and what would happen. This included the idea that Obama was an out-there left winger who would surely be thrown out of office because no one in America liked him, and he would never have a chance at a second term. Hence why Thanksgiving Uncle Conservatives will argue in both 2008 and 2012 that it must have been stolen, or some other conspiracy other than one guy fairly won and the other fairly lost. So I'm worried now that you are of such an assumption.
 
Mormonism is seen as a "cult" by evangelicals who are the hardest of the hardcore of the GOP base. A great many of them want nothing to do with any Mormon and several stayed at home. Even those who did vote for Romney were sub-enthusiastic about it. The secularist moderate Ryan did not help any. How does having a real evangelical TP running-mate not help at least somewhat?

I don't really think any candidate was going to overcome the "war on women" narrative that hung around the GOP's neck for all of 2012 (or, from October onward, the perception that a nutty Islamophobe's video was responsible for the murders of four Americans overseas), but Romney didn't do much to give himself a fighting chance by playing-it-safe.
Mormonism as a "cult" had certainly played a role in the primaries, but most of the religious right (especially the leadership) had rallied to Romney's side by the general election; you note he won the traditional Red states handily. He might get a little boost from marginal increases in Evangelicals, but it will be small, and almost certainly outweighed by losses from strengthening the "War on Women" meme (as almost any candidate from the religious right will have past statements or ties that can be mined for that). The cliche about "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line" was still quite operative in 2012.

Paul Ryan was a perfectly serviceable VP, and actually generated some positive press (which Romney needed). He was reasonably well respected across most of the Conservative base (note how he was considered an acceptable compromise candidate as Speaker by most Republican factions during the recent Speakership kerfuffle).

The biggest changes for replacing him will be: a) whoever was chosen probably throws their hat in the ring for 2016 (or is stronger, if it's someone currently running) and b) Paul Ryan, without the exposure, doesn't end up Speaker of the House.
 
It's hard to see this now considering what a joke she's become but Palin was not actually a bad choice at all at the time. People saw her as edgy, unconventional, a "straight talker"--and she even managed to get some interest, for a time, from the "other side". John McCain was simply a particularly atrocious candidate, himself. It had nothing to do with SP.

Actually, it didn't have much to do with John McCain, either. It had to do with the US economy collapsing while the Republicans held the White House.
 
Wait, what? Romney was convinced up until the votes were rolling in -- along with Conservatives -- that his victory was going to happen. To get candid, this is because of only listening to the echo chamber. The American Conservative movement came to fully believe everything it was saying and only listened to it's own ranks, resulting in a distorted assumption of what was going on and what would happen. This included the idea that Obama was an out-there left winger who would surely be thrown out of office because no one in America liked him, and he would never have a chance at a second term. Hence why Thanksgiving Uncle Conservatives will argue in both 2008 and 2012 that it must have been stolen, or some other conspiracy other than one guy fairly won and the other fairly lost. So I'm worried now that you are of such an assumption.

Most conservatives I know had figured out that Romney was hopeless as a campaigner even before the Convention in 2012.........besides not being worth the waste of a Vote. To many its questionable that Romney passed the Natural Born Citizen test of the Constitution.
 
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