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The aftermath of an election is just as important as the election itself. The losing party is sent scrambling for explanations of what went wrong and embedded in each explanation is a theory about what the party must do different in the future. The importance of interpreting a loss can’t be understated. One misinterpretation can mean permanent minority.

So far the one thing all conservatives agree on is that they lost the election, the democrats did not win it. But just why conservatives lost is still an open debate, and the dominant side of that debate thus far has been conservatives who feel their only mistake was not being conservative enough.

Conservative columnist and Talk Radio host, Hugh Hewitt argues, for instance, that Republicans “forfeited” their majority by taking “the easy way out” which lead directly to Tuesday’s disaster. Rush Limbaugh concurred and read Hewitt’s entire column on the air. But not only do the exit poll numbers not substantiate Hewitt and Limbaugh’s opinion, they show something else entirely.

Republicans didn’t lose their base; they lost the middle, pure and simple.

If it were true that compromise and weak knees lead to the stunning losses on Tuesday we would expect to see significantly lower turnout among conservatives, but we don’t. Exits polls from CNN estimate that 36% of House voters were Republican, down an insignificant 1% since 2004. Self-identified conservatives made up 32% of voters on Tuesday, down just 2% points from 2004. And white evangelicals turned out in virtually the same numbers this past Tuesday as they did two years ago.

So conservative turnout seems to be only marginally significant. A bigger part of the story is that conservatives simply didn’t vote as solidly Republican as they did in 2004. Kerry only received 21% of the evangelical vote in 2004. House Democrats on Tuesday got 29%. In 2004, 84% of conservatives voted Republican, this year that number is down to 78%.

When conservatives aren’t voting Republican the base is officially eroding and in a two-party system that erosion generally takes place in the middle.

Indeed, polls show conservatives did horribly amongst moderates and independents. In 2004, Bush and Kerry virtually split the Independent vote 48% to 49% respectively. On Tuesday the Democrats won big, 57% to 39%. Democrats also increased their numbers among self-described moderates getting 61% of the vote on Tuesday, up from 54% in 2004.

This certainly sounds like conservatism being defeated rather than “forfeited” as Hewitt would have it.

Even worse for Republicans is how they did among Latino voters, a demographic Bush and Rove have been courting for years. Republicans garnered only 29% of the Latino vote on Tuesday, down from 44% in 2004. It is impossible to interpret this as anything but a reaction to the GOP’s rhetoric on immigration. And yet, Hewitt and Limbaugh among others point repeatedly to immigration as an issue on which compromise cost the GOP.

Perhaps they assumed the right could offset the loss of Latino votes with big gains among those who are passionate about illegal immigration. But in a bit of electoral irony, the GOP won only 56% of the anti-illegal vote–those who think “most illegal immigrants should be deported.” While clearly a win, the numbers are hardly impressive given the intensity of the rhetoric. It’s hard to see the logic in thinking less compromise on immigration is the key to returning to majority status.

All this is not to say that conservatism is dead, only that it seems quite obvious that conservatism, as it’s been presented over the last few years, is no longer in touch with what most people care about. Since Bush was elected, conservative outrage has been focused on issues like gay marriage, immigration, and Terri Schiavo. Meanwhile the tax cuts were never made permanent, not a single government program was truly reformed, and spending has broken records, but, with the exception of a few bloggers, there’s been little to no public outrage.

If the Republicans want to be contenders in 2008 they will have to learn a lesson from 2006, but they need to make sure it’s the right lesson. Namely, that the party of the Contract With America seems to have lost touch with most of the American public. The party of lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, and limited government has become the party of anti-gay marriage, anti-immigration, and anti-stem cell research. Conservatives don’t have to give up these issues, but they have to take this election as evidence they don’t belong at the top of their agenda.