The other loss was for Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat which had been Republican for about 100 years. This is serious.
Well, the Republican Party in Illinois is dead; the only thing remaining is for it to have the sod shoveled over it. The death of the Republican Party in Illinois (which has always lived a precarious life here, because the Dims and the unions, both of whom own the big metropolitan areas in the state, thus pretty much control what happens in the state) can be laid at the feet of two people: Imprisoned former governor George Ryan; and former State Treasurer and GOP gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka, a former Democrat. Plus, an enabling media that provides cover for the Daley Crime Syndicate, and which is hostile to anything not associated with the Democratic Party, makes any Republican resurrection all but impossible.