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After looking at this thread and several others I think the main point why we lost is being missed. That is we ate our own. My email was full of pieces slamming fellow Republicans all year long calling them every name under the sun. It seems we forgot that there was another party out there that was truly the political foe till it was too late. Over the last year the emails focused on some issues we have dealt with the

Gang of 14-
I keep hearing this is a reason why Republicans lost? Really over the Nuclear option? That is so inside baseball no one cared. Never even heard it mentioned

Dubai Port deal- Well the President and others got slammed on that and boy did that help us at the polls. Another live or die issue of the hour that was not

Harriet Myers-
Somehow this is a reason but its often brought up even though we got Judge ALito out of it. For some reason Alito was never mentioned as a plus in this campaign

Immigration-
Emotional and complex issue that pretty much sent us on attack mode on each other.

That being said Republicans are a weird group that has a coaltion of business(big and small), Social and Religious Conservatives, Free Traders, Buchananite conservatives, Liberatarians,Fiscal Hawks, and small Govt types. Pretty much each of these factions and more were told to go to hell by their fellow Republicans and Conservatives.

THe key is sort out the difference in the Primaries. That is what they are for. We had some good examples of Republican primary races were there was a competition of ideas. After the Primary make up and shake hands and support the winner. It seems well into Sept I was still hearing about RINOS or Religious nuts taking over the party, or Big spending Republicans. Bad move. No one woke up to the fact that Pelosi and Brain Trust like Bennie Thompson chairing such things as the Homeland Security Committee was about to happen till it was too late.

THe key is sort out the difference in the Primaries. That is what they are for. We had some good examples of Republican primary races were there was a competition of ideas. After the Primary make up and shake hands and support the winner.

Bingo! That's the difference between libertarians and Losertarians. Losertarians get in a snit and go third party and shoot themselves in the foot.

Maybe some form of preferential voting would fix the problem. That would allow the Libertarians (and Greens or Socialists, etc.) to mark a satisfying 1 next to their guy and a 2 next to the Republican, hopefully.

For example, in the Indiana Ninth, the Democrat won with 49.95%, less than a majority. So, the last place candidate (the Libertarian) would have been eliminated. Then the ballots would have been recounted, distributing the Libertarian's votes according to the second or third choices marked. Thus, we would have seen exactly how the 9920 Libertarian votes would have broken.

Good post. It wasn't one big thing that hurt the pubbies, it was a lot of little things.

I think the Dubai Port deal and the open borders hurt us a lot, though. W was riding high, and everyone was giving him the benefit of the doubt on the WOT until he started the open borders thing. Now, I don't think most people have a problem with increasing the number of work visas from Mexico, or making legal immigration easier. However, protecting the borders against illegal immigration didn't even require any new laws. Just enforce the existing ones while working on an immigration policy. It did NOT have to become a crisis situation. From the time W started pushing the open borders his popularity dropped like a rock (this was before the 2004 election). I think a lot of people started rightly asking, "Why is my son (daughter) in Iraq, when our southern border is wide open and we have NO IDEA who's coming across?" It undercut his entire argument. The Dubai Ports deal may have been a good business move, but it had to be the dumbest political move of the last thirty years. In the middle of the WOT, we were talking about selling management contracts to an Islamic country on the southern border of Iraq. Whatever credibility W had on the WOT died with that move.

There were dozens of other things that came together, but I think these had a collective effect in seriously damaging the biggest area of Republican advantage.

Please note, I am not saying the Republicans losing was a good thing. I voted R. I am saying these issues hurt us.