I'm going to go out on a limb here, now that election tempers have cooled down.  As a conservative I think we as must do what we do best and look at ourselves critically?

Bad canadiates

Well firstly, the only good candidate we had in the primaries was Huckabee and he lost because we never cared enough to campaign hard enough.  McCain campaigned out of his car with 3 supporters, Huckabee had all the right charateristics but not the drive, he never rally wanted it bad enough to put the effort.  I also suspect he had a bad management team who failed to help him raise funds.

The firt mistake was picking John McCain, lets be honest we unlike liberals like to know who we are voting for, and no ne really knows what McCain believes in because he switches his views too much.  This was the same problem with Mitt Romney.

Second was picking Palin.  While she is not an idiot air head as the media portrays her, she was not intelligent for getting into the race.  There is a reason why others didnot want to run along with McCain, they knew McCain was a bad candidate.  You Palin doesn't understand national republican issues enough to speak intelligently on them, the media took advantage of this to portray her as an idiot when it was mere ignorance of the issues.  Had Palin had more time to prepare she probably would not have looked so bad.  I remember watching her on glenn beck saying she had no intent to be vp. Not sure why she changed her mind a few months later.

Thirdly, both Palin nd McCain have dirty past, which is bad but worst if you are going to run on the party that believes it is morally superior.  McCain has had numerous divorces, may have married his new wife for money and youth, and left his old wife when she became sick.  Truth is McCain should have become a democrat back in the late 90s and left republicans alone.  McCain was born in Panama not america so those people who tried to make Obama who actually was born in Hawaii look unamerican just made themselves look foolish.

Palin's personal life is another mess,h ere daughter is like 17 and pregannat and getting married to some other guy from her high school.  Not that the is wrong in and of it self but when you a representing the party of morality, you don't want to have people who can't control their own kids telling you how to control your own.  For Palin it is a private matter but for millions of americans it is a public issue.  I'm sorry, i'm pro-life, but not an idiot, hypocrits don't get elected.  I'd rather wait for ronald reagan son or jeb bush to run for office than elect these 2 messes to office.

Poor ratings

It can't be denied that Bush's low ratings with Iraq and theeconomy and all didn't have a carry over effect on all republicans

Good Strategisizing

Excuse my bad spelling, but at some point you must real and realize that the democrats ran their best campaign in years.  Winning Virgina, North Carolina, indiana, close in Missouri, Montana, nebraska, heck 8 point race in mccains home state.  At some point you have to recognize that Obama ran a good campaign.

Racism & Religion

During the race many republicans were saying that Obama was getting race votes for being black from black and sympathetic whites.  Looking back on it I have to think Colin Powell was right, so what if Obama was muslim, which he isn't.  The fact that Republicans seemingly embrace racism towards muslims drove away most racial minirotieis who don't even vote republican usually.  Racial minorities are only getting bigger and until republicans stop embracing the racist electoral who is shrinking we will loose more and more elections.  I rmemeber watch John Edwards saying that he didn't want the vote of anyone who wouldn't vote for a woman or a black on that basis. We didn't hear nothing like that outta the McCain camp and heard more forms of what think was veiled racism, mostly from Sarah Palin with stsamenets like Obama is not like me and you,he is different.

Sexism

Palin comes off as being a hypocrit, she critizes clinton in the democrat campaign for complainign about sexism but did the same when she was running off against Obama.  Thius is really minor though, what I think played a bigger role was that McCain took the riskto think that picking a woman would get him the woman vote.   Unfortunately this back fired in his face and to most women it looked to be an insincere insult that women are somehow sexist and will simply vote for any same geendere person regardless of beliefs.  This goes back into the portrayl of the old white, biggoted republican who thinks everyone is as racist and sexist as they are. 

Media

The media did play a role in getting Obama elected,  I wouldn't say he got a free ride as some suggest, I watched rev. wright for 1 month straight on tv, but I would say that there negative portrayls of palin may have hurt the mccain ticket

Hypocrisy

The real blow for the republicans though was really the hypocrtical candidates.  The portrayl of Obama as an Elitest when McCain is married to a beer baron who does business with Cuba, the portrayal of Obama's wife as a baby mama, when it was Palin child who was a baby mama, the rpublicans lost the election because they ran on the platform for elitism.  I can't think of 1 time McCain ever addressing the problems of inner city people, he never even said the word black people or hispanics in his whole campaign as if they don't matter.  Even George Bush went and talked to black people which earned him 18-20% of their vote in some states like Ohio.  Really and trully, I think McCain lost the election by not addressing key demographics in this country like women, latinos, blacks, liberals, poor, unions members,