Republicans have been spending the weeks after their miserable showing in the 2012 election trying to figure out why they did so miserably. Bobby Jindal said what a lot of people were thinking by suggesting the GOP needed to stop being “the stupid party.” Karl Rove, who didn’t back one winning candidate in the recent election, is blaming the Tea Party for promoting extreme, unelectable candidates.

Republican political operative Liz Mair, who has been a communications strategist for governors Scott Walker and Rick Perry, offers a sobering message to her party:

Everyone knows that Todd Akin, Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle were not good candidates. What a lot of people don’t seem to recognize is that their opponents, even though they looked like they would perform better based on on-paper attributes, were even worse candidates. How do I know this? They lost to Todd Akin, Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle. I’m serious. Think about that for a minute.

In her blog post “Forget what you’ve heard, here’s what’s really wrong with the GOP,” she lays out five reasons why the Republican Party is seeing stars, despite an ailing economy and the best demographic advantage they will ever have.

First, a lot of bad candidates have been fielded, and a lot of crappy campaigns have been run. And no, I don’t just mean that candidate whose name immediately popped into your head there.

Second, and tied in with this, we have too many less-than-cutting-edge and insufficiently creative and/or out-of-date consultants making a lot of money off of said crappy campaigns.

Third, our technology sucks in comparison to what Democrats have.

Fourth, growing portions of the electorate—Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans—either loathe us or just don’t like us.

Fifth, the party seems to have forgotten that it’s supposed to stand for something—by which I mean actual principles of some sort, and not just, say, the general bumper sticker concept that “OBAMA = BAD.”

After laying out her diagnosis, she has a few prescriptions on how to treat the problems. If you’re not a fan of the GOP, you should hope that no Republican with any power heeds her advice.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Jeff Roberson