Second, while we should not blame "Tea Party" candidates too much, neither should we pretend that many (O'Donnell, Miller, Angle) didn't have serious flaws as candidates. This is not something you can't overcome, but it is something that typically the PARTY helps you overcome, and if you're going to run against the Dem AND the Republican, well, you have to be just about perfect, as Rubio was.
Third, some of the winners, let's face it, were NOT "Tea Party" backed candidates. Portman in OH, a great guy and someone who will be a good senator, did not have exceptional support from the Tea Party; neither did DeWine for SoS, who appears to be winning. Neither did Kasich, who had a lot of conservative opposition but won anyway.
The message of this election is, if anything, that CONSERVATISM tended to do pretty well. Rubio, Toomey, Paul, Johnson, Portman---they are ALL orders of magnitude to the right of the person they replaced, Dem or Republican. That cannot be overstated. Pretty much across the board we ran conservative candidates. So we can't pretend that conservatism always wins, but we do know that when you combine conservatism with a really good candidate, DING DING DING you have a winner!!
House districts are usually more homogeneous, allowing the candidate to focus more. I think in a lot of the senate races, the inexperience (yes, there's that word) of the Tea Party candidates probably hurt them. Like it or not, there is a certain amount of polish---learning how to avoid gaffes, for example---that comes with holding office a couple of times. We saw it with Toomey, who won in a blue state. Portman made NO serious errors in OH. On the other side, you had Linda McMahon, who ran a closer race than anyone thought in a deep blue state, but who nevertheless had that WWF baggage.
Now, if our side wants to crush the Dems in 2012, it must not only nominate conservative candidates, but GOOD conservatives with some experience. And it helps if the damn party elites get on board with the candidates.
Did you notice that (in general) the races which garnered the most laser-like, focused, media interest, actually *became* over time the most personal, and focused on the candidate, instead of nationalized?
In fact, ---
in those races, the Alinskyite technique of pick your target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it was actually allowed to work.
Because in those races -- the GOP allowed the Dems and the MSM to do that to their candidate, instead of the GOP candidate forcing the press to do it to Obama.
And doing that to Obama is how we need to win a landslide in 2012.
Cheers!