I'm monitoring an interesting debate between some of my fellow Ohio bloggers as to why the GOP had such a rough election, especially in Ohio. Matt Hurley of Weapons of Mass Discussion, and sees the loss as a problem within the party and something that needs to be addressed by cracking heads within the GOP:

I fear that we are not actually taking appropriate action in the face of such a huge loss at the state level. Something really bad happened and I haven't heard a peep from the political guru class just what exactly happened and what they propose to fix it. If Bennett isn't the problem, I think Ohio's Republicans deserve an answer to two questions: What was the problem? And how are we going to fix it?

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The problem that I see is that there was a breakdown in the coalition of social conservatives and the moderates. Someone with some credibility in both camps is going to have to step up and bridge that divide...I don't know who that might be, but the party ought to be seeking that person out pronto. (Might this be a job for John Kasich?)

Matt Dole of Lincoln Logs can be fairly characterized as a mainstream GOP Republican more party oriented than ideological and he writes that the problem is not within the party, it was outreach to the moderates and non politically affiliated:

What happened this year was not ideological. It was psychological. Support was difficult to get because Republicans were behind from day 1. Support was difficult to get because Republicans have been in control in Ohio for 12 years and nationwide for those same 12 years, and voters perceived a change was necessary. Elections are won in a big large area of voters who don't really identify themselves politically. They don't consider themselves Republicans or Democrats, and they have supported a wide spectrum of candidates From John Glenn to Ken Blackwell in the past. This year, the collective news cycle that was Noe/Ney/Taft/2004 election/Iraq caused them to support Democrats. They didn't support Conservative Republicans, they didn't support moderate Republicans. They supported supposed moderate Democrats and liberal democrats.

2006 was not lost inside the Republican Party. It was lost with the masses who don't identify with either party, and I am getting pretty tired of the ideological blame-game considering both the Conservative Ken Blackwell and moderate Mike DeWine lost. Maybe we would be better of blaming the democrats for getting their act together for once after 12 years...

My own personal take is that we should not see this as a war between the moderate GOP and the conservatives, the breakdown was between social conservatives and economic conservatives. The economic conservatives felt, quite fairly, that the GOP left them for higher taxes and spending. The social conservatives really had no issues on the table, and many of them are economic conservatives as well ( a point often missed ).

The problem with the independents is not that the GOP had no outreach to them, but that the GOP was a hollow shell of itself, that had obviously sold it's soul to the moderate wing of the party, which had no vision or values of itself other than staying in power. Add the corruption in the mix, and that's not an awful message to independent voters. Hence the loss.

Prescription: Get the social and economic conservatives together, and tell the moderate GOP folks that love to tax and spend to go join the Democrats.