One of the ways the Republicans have taken over as the majority party has been through their embrace of rhetoric which bypasses the rational mind and aims straight for emotion. The obvious example is their eager invocation of the 9/11 attacks to justify every legislative atrocity under the sun; I have heard it said that the definition of a liberal is "someone whose brain didn't stop working on September 12, 2001". There are other effective examples of this technique: how else can one explain Republicans getting so much mileage out of junk "controversies" like the so-called War on Christmas or "threats to marriage" that don't even touch upon the issue of divorce?
In this vein, the Republicans seem to recruit their candidates not necessarily on the basis of intelligence or even experience, but on the basis of their abilities to communicate these emotional, straight-to-the gut arguments. By connecting with eager-for-simple-solutions voters by bypassing the rational mind, the GOP can effectively neutralize REAL issues in national and regional campaigns, and render the issue- and fact-based arguments of Democrats irrelevant.
The Democrats have been extremely slow to pick up on this. On those rare occasions when they HAVE been blessed with candidates who DO aim for the gut (as intelligent as they may be), the Democratic establishment's immediate response is to stifle them and make sure they never get close to a real campaign. Howard Dean and Paul Hackett are the two most obvious examples of this; it was greatly feared that their "inexperience" or their "straight talk" -- in effect, their ability to connect with voters' EMOTIONS -- might prove too "risky", and thus they had to be removed from the scene and replaced with candidates who might have been ideologically sound and personally decent, but bland, safe, conventional and wonkish. Though the jury is still out on Sherrod Brown (and I certainly hope he wins and I'm sure he'll make a terrific Senator), it is this FEAR of unconventionality, the FEAR of going for the GUT, that has been a major factor in the paralysis of the Democratic Party over the last decade or so.
You think the Republicans worried that Arnold Schwarznegger would be ridiculed as an inexperienced political neophyte? You think they CARE that Lynn Swann has never held public office?
Bill Clinton had the rare gift of being an intelligent, savvy politician who could ALSO connect with voters on an emotional level, and his (and the Dems') reward was two terms in office. But Bill Clinton was one of a kind. The Democrats are doing themselves a grave disservice by eating their young just because they don't paint by numbers. Given the party's state, a little outside-the-box thinking might very well be in order. You can't fall out of a ditch.