Here's something else to consider:
One of the flaws of the GOP's campaign against Obama was that it was based on assertions that were -- surprisingly -- verifiably false. For example, the GOP has been painting Obama as a president who is hell-bent on raising taxes -- and that would seem like something that's beyond question. And yet here we are in late 2012 ... more than a decade after most of the "Bush tax cuts" were implemented ... and more than seven years after Barack Obama begain railing against those tax cuts as a U.S. Senator from Illinois ... and those Bush tax rates are still in place.
Heh, that’s actually a really good point re: many in the GOP painting Obama as a tax-raising fiend given the fact that he hasn’t actually done this (yet).
I suppose a counterpoint at least, is he does often talk about upping taxes “bla bla millionaires billionaires fair share bla bla”. And I do believe he’d raise taxes of course given decent political cover (i.e. 2nd term)… but, since he hadn’t actually done so, perhaps in some way this made Obama’s naysayers look the fool for being klaxons on this issue in the eyes of those without strong opinions about Obama, which may’ve hurt the process of building a case against him.
Arguably there’s a lot of echo chamber effect / bunker mentality among GOP voters, such that everyone’s mutually agreeing with and reinforcing antipathies against Obama, which causes us to lose perspective on the fact that… other non-Democrat voters may not feel quite the same as we do.