The general sentiment was that Romney stood the best chance of winning against Obama, and if you go back to the early months of the year you'll find a lot of polling data that supports this.
Having said that, I'd also add that you shouldn't blame Romney for the down-ticket losses this year. When you look at a state like North Dakota -- where the Democratic Senate candidate won in a state where Obama only got 39% of the popular vote -- you clearly have a situation where Republican candidates were completely tone-deaf about the local issues in their jurisdictions.
Don't look at this election from the top down ... look at it from the bottom up. THAT is how the GOP needs to fix its problems.
“The general sentiment was that Romney stood the best chance of winning against Obama, and if you go back to the early months of the year you’ll find a lot of polling data that supports this.”
The election data that we possess now, demonstrates that this opinion was 100 percent wrong.
How many polls predicted that Romney would go -2 in the senate? Exactly zero. He lost pretty much every single close race, save North Carolina. Why? Because he depressed turnout among some of the strongest conservatives.
“you shouldn’t blame Romney”
Again, like I asked you before, why does Romney always get a pass for being a crappy candidate? Look at the average Republican nominee. How many nominees have lost 13 states?