Alright, here you go.
Romney decides not to run. 2008 was just a terrible experience for him. Huckabee is content with his show on Fox and has a lot of baggage from that and his time as governor, so he believes he won't be able to win. There's no clear front-runner for the establishment to back. Haley Barbour, who wants to run but is aware that it's bad optics for a hefty white southerner to run against the first black president, convinces his friend Governor Mitch Daniels to run. Daniels' personality isn't firing up the base or anything at first, but he campaigns on his conservative record as governor because everything that the other new Republican governors are doing? He did it first. Newt Gingrich's campaign collapses as it did in 2011 OTL, as do Pawlenty's and Perry's. Bachmann actually stays in the race and manages to pull off a win in Iowa, although Daniels polls a respectable second. He wins New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida and it's off to the races from there and he wins the nomination.
Daniels is aware he doesn't have foreign policy chops, and he doesn't want to double down on a two-scoops of vanilla ticket. He's looking to shake things up. So he goes with Condi as his running mate. (He said he would back when there was buzz around him as a candidate.) The pick is a moderate success and the race with Obama and Biden is neck-and-neck.
My Man Mitch dies in a plane crash in mid-September. The Republicans bump Condi to the top of the ticket; she only agrees reluctantly. The Republicans are looking for a bottom of the ticket replacement and settle on Jon Huntsman, a former ambassador and governor of Utah, who had withdrawn from the race before Iowa, endorsed Daniels, had campaigned as a surrogate for him, and was the subject of much bottom-of-the-ticket buzz before the selection of Condi.
After Daniels' death the Republican ticket gets a huge bounce in sympathy support and is leading Obama by about 5% in the polls. The Democrats are slow to ramp up the attack machine and wait just a little too long to get started again. While the Republican lead dwindles as Election Day approaches, Obama can't catch up to Rice / Huntsman in time. Rice picks up Florida, Ohio, and Colorado and becomes the 45th President of the United States.