Of all these arguments, the only two you are likely to hear ad nauseam are:
too much social conservatism and too much war.
Why? Because that's the view of the liberal establishment that for 40 years
has been arguing that if only conservatives were more liberal they'd be more
successful, even as the conservative movement has been the most successful
political enterprise of the last half-century.
Philosophically, reasonable people may differ about whether there's been too
much social conservatism, but politically, this is idiotic. As Ramesh
Ponnuru notes in the National Review, Christian conservatives give the GOP
as many votes as labor and blacks combined give to the Democrats. It's to
the Republicans' electoral advantage to take positions that shock the
conscience of Rosie O'Donnell.
It's also true that the Iraq war is unpopular; that's because it's not going
swimmingly. If it were otherwise, Iraq would be a political boon to the GOP.
Now, you might say, "Yeah, and except for the brief unpleasantness, Mrs.
Lincoln had a wonderful time at the theater." But it is not the conservative
position to botch wars. And contrary to the slanderous codswallop you've
heard for the last year, conservative principles do not require flooding New
Orleans. While we're on this point, corruption and cronyism aren't core
planks in the conservative platform either. Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.) lost
his seat because of an alleged personal scandal, but I can assure you
there's nothing in the works of Edmund Burke that says a good conservative
should try to strangle his mistress.
In other words, just as Democrats insisted, the GOP's drubbing had more to
do with competence and scandal than program and ideology.
Indeed, if the conservative base hadn't been disgusted with Republican
management, and if so many Democrats hadn't run as social conservatives, the
GOP might have done just fine in this election.
Republicans lost because they behaved like self-indulgent politicians, not
purists. Conservatives care a lot about ideas, so that's where we'll try to
assign blame. But the ideologues aren't to blame. The Republicans are.