Social conservatives blame squishy positions

As Romney aides began the soul-searching that usually follows a loss, Republicans outside the campaign began pointing fingers at the team.

Some social conservatives were quick to rip open barely healed wounds, claiming that Romney's squishy positions on abortion and same-sex marriage -- closely scrutinized during both of his Republican primary campaigns -- left grass-roots Republicans uninspired.

"What was presented as discipline by the Romney campaign by staying on one message, the economy, was a strategic error that resulted in a winning margin of pro-life votes being left on the table," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List.

Some wondered aloud about the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as Romney's running mate, suggesting that a Republican from a more winnable battleground state might have made a difference.

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"Rob Portman would've been worth 1% in Ohio," said former Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine. "Marco Rubio would've been worth a point in Florida. Bob McDonnell would've been worth a point in Virginia."

The Romney team and his super PAC allies, some Republicans are already saying, ran a banal series of television ads and allowed their candidate to be defined early on by Obama as an outsourcing plutocrat who wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt.

Their pushback seemed feeble for most of the summer and early autumn. And crucially, Romney never seemed to articulate a clear rationale for the presidency.

The campaign's decision to air a misleading ad in Toledo media market about Chrysler moving Jeep production to China during the closing days of the race is also emerging as a prime reason for Romney's loss in the state he needed to win most.

One senior Ohio Republican called the Jeep ad a "desperate" move and said the Romney campaign walked into a "hornet's nest" of negative press coverage.

Nick Everhart, a Columbus-based ad maker, blamed the Ohio loss, in part, on the Romney campaign's "poor media buying."

But an adviser to one prominent Republican governor who campaigned for Romney said the campaign's problems were more fundamental.

"Obama ran a very smart but very small campaign, which he could afford to do because he was running against a very small opponent," this Republican said. "The fundamentals of the election were the same all along, and they were this: When there's an incumbent no one wants to vote for, and a challenger that no one wants to vote for, people will vote for the incumbent. At no point did Romney give people any reason to vote for him, and so they didn't."

Democrats keep control of Senate

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