The primary consisted of candidates, campaigns, voters and elections. It was a weak field and the notRomney opposition failed to unite around one candidate.
Blaming the party is nonsense. Supporting an even weaker candidate with even less unity does nothing to fix the problem, is a nonsensical, perhaps feel good, exercise.
The GOP never has a good candidate (Dole, McCain, Bush, etc.). I don’t know what these “principled” conservatives expected. If you only vote for the perfect conservative candidate, you will always get a liberal democrat.