I may expand on this later...I am sympathetic to the people who bought into the idea of the Romney campaign but, as happened to those of us who backed Rudy or Fred, the time has come to accept that the reality of the campaign was never what it was cracked up to be. In Mitt's case, he just wasn't the champion of conservative principles and enforcer of conservative orthodoxy he played on the trail. He was and is a pragmatic businessman, and a very good one. I have argued that Rudy should have sold a modified position on Roe v Wade not as a change of heart but as a principled compromise. A similar approach might have worked for Mitt as well on some of the issues he shifted on. Instead, while Rudy wouldn't move far enough, Mitt tried too hard on too many fronts and ended up with nobody believing that he was the guy he was running as.
A hamburger is a delicious and popular meal. A grilled chicken sandwich is nutritious and reasonably tasty. You can sell a hamburger, and you can sell a grilled chicken sandwich; both have their virtues. But as anyone with a marketing background could have told you, you can't get people to buy a grilled chicken sandwich by convincing them that it is a hamburger.