The problem is social conservatism is so rooted in the GOP, it makes it impossible to support them. Obama should be losing by a landslide right now, but instead of focusing on fiscal conservatism the GOP wants to focus on social conservatism.
Again, you're talking about Obama so I'm going to assume you're talking about the national level. The GOP nationally are not "focusing" on social conservatism....they're not abandoning it, but they're not focusing on it. The people driving the conversation regarding social issues are largely on the left in this electoin cycle.
If you are suggesting that the GOP should flat out "abandon" social conservatism, either taking zero stance on social issues or taking a liberal stance, rather than simply not "focus" on it then you're being ridiculous imho. They're not going to simply not take a stance on a large segment of the political spectrum and its incredibly unlikely to expect they will go from promoting it heavily in past years to flat out doing a 180 on their stance now to match up with Democrats.
So far, on the national election front, they have been attempting to focus on FISCAL conservatism more so than focusing on social conservatism. That's WHY the left has largely been attempting to highlight and focus on the social conservative side of them as a means of attack...because the Republicans aren't making that part a focus themselves this time so the Democrats have to do it for them.
Stategically speaking in a political sense, it's actually genius. The Republicans aren't going to be able to completely run away from social conservatism in the religious right vien of thinking in a single election cycle. Just isn't feasable. However, they were obviously trying to focus their talk and campaign on fiscal issues this time out rather than trying to put abortions, gay marriage, or the need to select judges that would rule a certain way on those things out in the forefront as a primary focus. But by attacking them on social conservative views, even though the national campaign isn't pushing it, the Democrats successfully:
1) Force the Republicans to make it more of a focus because they have to respond and responding talks about it and talks about it gives focus to it; and
2) reminds those independents that may've been apt to listen to the fiscal message because they weren't being bombarded with the social message along side it that "Hey, the Republicans hold these social conservative views"
It's a great move politically speaking for the Left. But it's definitely them pushing the issue into the forefront