Ed Luce repeats a common mistaken assumption about the 2012 election:

Given the weak state of the US economy and Obama’s inability to bend Washington to his will, 2012 ought to have been a far closer contest [bold mine-DL].

It’s true that the economy was relatively weak, but the important factor was that it wasn’t getting worse and was slightly improving. That meant that the incumbent should have been the favorite. Romney and his campaign failed to understand all along the state of the economy did not give the GOP an advantage in the election. They assumed that it made their victory likely. Likewise, Romney assumed that the GOP had an advantage on most major issues with the public when the reverse was true. A different review of Collision 2012 describes Romney’s thinking:

The lesson was wasted on Romney, who as of January could still “believe the American people would line up with the Republican Party on the major issues of the day.”

Of course, every politician hopes that a majority will prefer his party’s policies, but to assume that it will just work out that way is an invitation to complacency and failure. Something else that Romney and his allies never fully appreciated was the extent to which the GOP itself was still politically radioactive after the Bush years. Obama’s feuds with a Republican-dominated House after the midterms may not have done much for his political fortunes, but they were even worse for the reputation of a party that was still tarred with the many failures of the previous administration. The GOP was trying to beat a sitting president on the heels of the worst Republican administration in decades, so it would have been truly extraordinary if they had won the election. Add to this the various campaign blunders and the superior organization of the other campaign. Republicans in 2012 were facing an enormous uphill battle, but for most of the campaign they seemed oblivious to this and assumed that the election was theirs to lose. In the end, their problem was not just Romney and his campaign, but also their complete misreading of the political landscape before and during that campaign.