The uninformed voter is one of the most important parts of the Republican base.
Democrats argue on the issues, which is a mistake. Wonks like us care about the issues. Most people don't. Most people just care about one or two issues and vote on those issues.
Republicans are masters at creating an "image" and getting people to vote for that. Mr. Dime Store Cowboy is the best example of that. Democrats also have their image candidates, like Barack Obama, Mark Warner, and John Edwards but the Republicans are doing a much better job of creating and promoting these types AND perhaps most importantly, using them to promote candidates down the ballot.
Republicans also know enough to attack the image, not the issues, which the Democrats seem to be oblivious to. That was the motivation behind Dick Cheney's compliment of John Edwards "nice hair" at the RNC, even though Edwards is quite competent and does know the issues very well.
As for the issues, the Republicans know that people only vote on one or two issues and they market a very fine tuned message to the individual voter, which is very effective.
I'll give you an example of what I am talking about with the issues. Let's take two voters.
Voter one is fairly affluent. She is a tolerant lady and rarely attends church. Her biggest concerns are how much she has to pay in taxes and how well her portfolio does. She is proudly pro-choice. She thinks religious voters are 'wacko'.
Voter two is not affluent. He is a devout Christian who attends church every sunday. He is not a fundamentalist, but his beliefs would be considered more conservative than average. He is concerned with the pursuit of money at the expense of one's spiritual life. He is concerned with what he consideres to be the moral decline of America, not necessarily because he wants to tell people to do, but because he believes that many poor moral decisions lead to undesirable consequences both for the individual and society. He is pro-life.
Given that, it is safe to say that voter one and voter two don't agree on much of anything. Yet they both reliably vote Republican. The fact that Republicans are winning both voters is why they win elections.
Democrats need to counter this. Democrats should run like Republicans. Remember Clinton's "trickle down" ad from 1992? Democrats need to run something like that again. Democrats need to figure out how to win the center and how to tip at least some of the "cross pressured" voters into the Democratic camp.
Democrats will take the House in 2006. Republican screw-ups have virtually guaranteed it. However, if they want to hold it, they are going to have to learn how to campaign like Republicans.