The Tea party and Fox News lead the GOP to defeat through a variety of strategic errors. The teabag army was a tactic that could not be modified. They did not have a clear vision of "victory," and their siege mentality exhausted them while the enemy regained their strength.
There were several strategic missteps:
1 Anti-union rhetoric and conspiracy theories alienated labor and retirees who might have worried about the "Cadillac tax."
2 Dems who might cross over to vote with GOP were shown that they would still be savaged by gun waving screamers in the fall.
3 Peaked too early with the apocalyptic blood libels about Obama killing Grandma or veterans - in an election save that hardcore crazy for the 48 hours before a vote.
4 Posturing over "deem and pass" when they should have been working their strategy instead of posing for Fox News. Was that whole thing a masterful head-fake by the Dems?
5 Pinned their hopes on Stupack, who could be bought off with a "get out of jail free card" for him and The Family's C-Street sex club.
6 Prevented any Republicans from supporting health care reform.
Now think about this - if any GOPers had announced their support of the bill, they might well have given "bipartisan" cover for Dems to vote against the bill.
Instead they spent the last 6 months doing a victory dance and declaring that Obama was one term president. If they had kept the debate alive and welcomed wavering Dems, they could have defeated the proposal and made themselves look reasonable. But they made themselves look stubborn and crazy.
Suppose a dozen Republican representatives had just pretended to be on the fence? Wouldn't Pelosi and Reid have been much less effective at lining up votes? And then the GOPers could have voted no, and the proposal would have lost by a dozen or more votes. The endless Lucy-yanking-the-football-away routine would have worked one more time if the GOP had just made an effort to sell it to Dems and the voters. Instead, they alternated between doing their little endzone celebration and whining that the Dems were not given them a chance to participate.