Hey, wake up and smell the Illinois coffee. Even the Bush machine lost by 10% in Illinois. When you feed corruption the way Chicagoans did in the 1920s and 1930s, it tends to leave a legacy that is passed on to following generations.
It's Illinoisians who have created the ultra-sensitive "china shop," where they don a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkey mask about the unborn our country is killing.
The Republicans could have had the most perfect pro-life candidate tone-wise in Illinois, and he/she would have still lost the Senate.
You have a point there. It still holds true, however, that it doesn't matter if you have the "right" position on any issue if you can't get elected. If he's going to be a roving candidate, he might do better in a deep South state, where both whites and blacks are more socially conservative. But then, he's Catholic, which may go against him even more than being black.