Why did McCain Lose?

I've missed out on the opportunity to comment on a lot of Conservative Post-Mortems of the election but there are still a few being written, including Carol Platt Liebau's latest article. In it she gives four reasons, the Media, Campaign Finance Reform, Latinos and McCain. Yep, John McCain must share a portion of the blame for his campaigns failure.

For almost his entire Senate career, John McCain prided himself on his status as a “maverick.” In doing so, however, he alienated a good number of regular Republicans who would have contributed more and worked harder to elect a candidate about whom they were more enthused.

Obviously the key element in any conservative post-mortem is to remind readers that Conservatism didn't lose. Conservatism is the best policy and the American people really love Conservatism. So once you absolve Conservatism, well, you have to find something else to blame the movements failures on, and the culprit is usually the media or insufficient conservatism.