If the national cmapaign were run as shoddily at the state/local levels, it makes sense that this was a loss for the GOP.
About the state/local levels...
My mother has been a Republican all her adult life, belongs to the local Republican Women organization, and in general is about as GOP as a person can get. She is also fed up with the GOP. Why? Here are just a few reasons.
1. The local organizations are staffed with old-timers who "know it all." Not that they actually DO know it all, but - like the dumbass who has seniority in a union shop simply because he (miraculously) hasn't fallen into the machinery - they have become fixtures. New people are barely allowed, and new ideas are rarely allowed (see next entry).
2. If someone in the local org does come up with a new twist or a better plan, it will die/be killed unless one of the "grand dames" (of either biological gender) can somehow claim ownership and modify it to benefit their own position within the party. And make no mistake: retaining or advancing one's position in the hierarchy trumps everything else. "Hey! Great idea! Glad you I thought of it! But it needs to be changed so that I..."
3. Enthusiasm is for little people. Think of Queen Victoria announcing,"We are not amused." Well, the important people are not amused when someone is enthused. It is as if enthusiasm is somehow vulgar, something only a commoner would feel. Positive, infectious excitement isn't easy when a Greg Ganske or Doug Gross have come up in the GOP rolodex again, but if the Iowa Republicans came up with a conservative Obama, I suspect they'd tell people to not wave their arms so much when he spoke at rallies.
4. Many local orgs have had the life sucked right out of them by the state apparatus, which apparently exist only to benefit a small group or individual (in Iowa at present, Iverson seems to be the chief beneficiary of whatever goes on anywhere in the state). It wouldn't be so pathetic if that group/individual got results.
5. Conservatives are icky. It isn't just the Palin-loathing McCain staffers and national bluebloods who don't care much for Joe the Plumber when he can't be taken for granted. Some of the finger-sandwich-eating swells are so out of touch that they might as well be Ivy League limo-libs: grandpaw might have been a pistol-totin', beer-sippin', folk-dancin' all-American, but there'll be none of that in OUR party! And our lower intestine is packed with fragrant digested food by-products, if you please!
Okay, not every local is like this, and they know who they are (as do the others, but those people will deny it and sniff disdainfully). Anyway, ma is about at the point with the GOP that she reached with the ELCA: I didn't leave it, it left me.
Mr. niteowl77