All of the reasons you state are true of course, but the biggest reason in my opinion why the Republicans lost is because of the MSM. As the comedian Jackie Mason recently said on Neil Cauvto, "The MSM won the election for the Democrats". Nothing could be further from the truth! Here's something I copied and pasted from Powerlineblog.
That's the title of this provocative post on the Power Line Forum. T>2 writes:
I’ve read the post-mortems and the analysis as to why the Republicans lost (i.e. lack of progress in Iraq, Republican lost their way and betrayed conservative principles etc.). I’m sure those reasons played a part. However, I think that one only has to understand what Hamilton referred to as the “Ignorant Masses” and their susceptibility to the old media’s influence to identify one of the greatest contributing factors to Republican losses. I’ve encountered a lot of people in my travels and I must say that I find it depressing how astonishingly ignorant most are in regards to all things political. I also find it amazing how readily these people parrot conventional wisdoms and clichés created by the mainstream media regardless of any factual basis. ***
An article in the American Thinker states: “The New Media have not yet beaten the Old. They are making a difference, but the Old Liberal Media have protected their power, at the cost of major alienation from millions of America. Over time, the Old Media will continue to move to the Net, but the political debate will continue. The New Media have a voice, but not as powerful as ABCCBSNBCPBSNPR.” ***
Not only is the old media still more powerful, but they are – in my opinion – doing an effective job at marginalizing the new media. Conventional wisdoms created by the old media include: Fox News is a right wing news service, Talk radio consist of a bunch of mean spirited right wing nut-jobs, and the blogosphere is comprised of a bunch of pajama wearing wannabes that don’t have any more credibility than any other source on the internet. I had once found hope in the belief that the new media would be able to make a breakthrough in reaching the masses. These days however, I fear that the new media is being relegated to preaching to the choir (as Rush has been doing for many years in my opinion – his audience hasn’t seen change in composition or size for some time).
I think he's mostly right. In my view, the old/mainstream/legacy/drive-by media have taken the gloves off, and have become more nakedly partisan than ever over the last two election cycles. I think this has a lot to do with the Democrats' victory on Tuesday.
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UPDATE: As of 10:00 p.m., there are 54 posts on this thread. It has exploded into a vigorous debate on the roles of new and old media and their relevance to the Democrats' victory last Tuesday. Check it out, and if the urge strikes, contribute to the discussion. One more thing: please remember to register with a valid email address, because you will get an email that you have to click on to activate your registration. Don't worry; we don't sell email addresses and you won't be spammed.
For more on this go here
http://www.powerlineblog.com/powerlinenews/index.php/forums/viewthread/8297/Don't give up on the New Media yet, we screwed up big time by a lot of in-fighting from Boortz to Savage(he's a little unbalanced anyway) to Rush taking on a popular celeb to feed his ego only hors before election.
Mccaskill credited him with her win she may have been right, we need to learn and get a little smarter if we want to lead and win as a party.
Once we get our act together we will become a more formidable force.
After all the old/msm/DBM has had years to perfect their act, we need a little more time to get it together.
Bottom line is that people are basically conservative,
When liberal values are presented to a voting populace they don't fly. People want a strong defense, they want secure borders they want balanced budgets etc.
We have lost of work to do in all those areas but in the long run it will be ours to lose,just like 06.