This will come as news to Washington politicians and pundits, but the Republicans lost former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat not because it represents a political sea change, as Democrats would have it.

Nor should they buy the Republican explanations that it was some kind of fluke.

Truth is, the loss of the historically Republican district has virtually no national meaning. It is a measure of the moribundity of the Illinoisʼ Republican Party, whose national consequences seem not to be fully appreciated by the GOPʼs national proprietors. The once proud and powerful party of the late senators Everett McKinley Dirksen and Charles Percy, and more recently former Gov. Big Jim Thompson, has sunken to such depths it didn’t even bother to field token candidates in the populous Cook County.