DES MOINES (AP) — When Republicans pick a new leader of the state party in January they will complete a replacement of virtually the entire GOP leadership team, but some worry they haven’t addressed the party’s real problems.

In the wake of election losses earlier this month, Republicans have begun an intense debate about how to broaden the party’s message to attract independents and moderates. Some argue that misses the point.

“It’s not ideology, it’s mechanics,” said House Minority Leader Chris Rants, R-Sioux City, who lost his leadership post in the reorganization following the election. “Everybody wants to talk about ideology because that’s more fun, but that misses the point.”

Steve Scheffler, head of the Iowa Christian Alliance, agrees.

“We’re going to have to get up to speed in terms of new technology, organization and raising money,” Scheffler said. “We can’t run campaigns like we did 20 years ago.”

Democrats ran the table in this year’s election, adding three seats to their majority in the House and two to their Senate majority. Sen. Tom Harkin cruised to an easy win, and Barack Obama didn’t break a sweat in carrying the state’s seven electoral votes.

Immediately after the election, a debate emerged within the state’s Republican Party about whether it had become too conservative and too reliant on the social conservative base of the GOP.

Rants and others argued that the Republican woes are much more basic than the message it offers. They say the party simply got outhustled.

Beginning with a competitive campaign for Iowa’s precinct caucuses between Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrats aggressively signed up new voters. By the time the election rolled around, Democrats had built a 106,000 lead in registered voters.

In addition, they delivered those voters to the polls. Roughly one-third of the electorate voted early, and Democrats won the early vote by a nearly 2-1 margin, Rants said.

Rep. Kraig Paulsen, of Hiawatha, who replaces Rants as House Minority Leader, said the GOP’s “72-hour plan” to turn out voters in the closing days was ineffective because of the number of people who voted early.

“The 72-hour plan did not have the same effect it had in the past,” Paulsen said. “There are some mechanical things we need to address. The huge increase in early voting makes it dramatically more difficult and more expensive to communicate with the electorate.”

While the party needs to broaden its message, it also needs to get back to the political basics, said Doug Gross, the 2002 gubernatorial nominee.

“We don’t kick out the social conservatives,” Gross said. “We can’t win without them, but we can’t win only with them and we need to understand that and broaden the tent.”