Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate Republican who served as George Bush’s environmental protection chief, stated point blank that the Republican party’s problem was its “self-imposed captivity to social fundamentalists.” Whitman and Robert Bostock, writing in the Washington Post, explained that Obama won because he lured away moderates:

In 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry held just a nine-percentage-point margin among moderate voters over President Bush. This year, the spread between Barack Obama and McCain was 21 points among this group. The net difference between the two elections is a deficit of nearly 6.4 million moderate votes for the Republicans in 2008.

Whitman and Bostok note that actually social conservatives came out in large numbers for McCain, so it can’t be argued that it was a dispirited base that led to the defeat:

Many in the GOP are arguing that John McCain was defeated because the social fundamentalists wouldn’t support him. They seem to be suffering from a political strain of Stockholm syndrome. They are identifying with the interests of their political captors and ignoring the views of the larger electorate. This has cost the Republican Party the votes of millions of people who don’t find a willingness to acquiesce to hostage-takers a positive trait in potential leaders.

I suppose the folks at Family Research Council didn’t much like being referred to as hostage-takers. In their newsletter Friday they responded that most Republicans thought Sarah Palin was the better half of the ticket and argued that the success of the anti-gay-marriage amendments shows the popularity of socially conservative views:

Despite what the centrists claim, it was a social issue-not energy or the environment-that delivered the most sweeping, bipartisan victory in the entire election.
Republicans are in this wilderness, not because they spent the last six years embracing limited government and moral values, but because the two parties were almost indistinguishable. The future of the GOP depends on strong leaders who will embrace a positive message of faith and family. Only then will the GOP win the respect of voters.

My own view on who’s to blame can be found here.