John McCain and others who for some reason feel obliged to defend the Sarah Palin pick like to say she "fired up the party's base." Yeah--then the other voters saw what your party's base looks like when it's fired up, and headed the other way in droves.
This was a train wreck. Romney wanted to talk about how (or at least give the impression that) he was going to create prosperity in 2013; now he's going to spend the next three months talking about how important it is to gut Social Security in 2023.