My syndicated newspaper column looks at the massive defeat of the Senate Republicans in Illinois. The Senate Democrats now have a veto-proof majority plus one.

[Senate GOP Leader Frank Watson’s] candidates were outclassed by one of the most extraordinary crops of Democratic hopefuls I’ve ever seen fielded at any one time; the Democrats had their most successful election since Watergate; mega-rock star Barack Obama personally campaigned or appeared in direct mail for all the Senate Democratic hopefuls and — bada-bing, bada-boom — the Republicans are left with 22 seats, and they’re now more irrelevant than an electric blanket in Baghdad.

The joke going around last week was that Watson’s punishment for losing so many races ought to be another two years as minority leader.

How serious was the Illinois Republican debacle? The AP has some bullet points.

* Forty-six percent of voters identified themselves as Democrats, compared to 39 percent just two years ago. Only 31 percent claimed the title of Republican, down from 34 percent.

* Hispanics, the state’s fastest growing ethnic group, overwhelmingly consider themselves Democrats. Seventy-nine percent of Hispanic voters identified themselves as Democrat, and only 8 percent as Republicans.

* Fifty-one percent of female voters consider themselves Democrats, and only 30 percent Republicans.

* Democrats made gains in legislative districts in Chicago suburbs that had been safely Republican, giving them a “super-majority” in the Senate that will let them pass any kind of legislation without GOP votes.

* The party’s “farm team” was devastated. Every candidate for statewide office was defeated, often by a landslide.

* For the first time in more than a century, a Democrat won a seat on the McHenry County Board.

Eric Krol adds some perspective.

The Illinois Republican Party now has managed to win just one statewide race in the past six years.

Following last week’s electoral debacle, the state GOP is 1-for-14 during that time, with the only win coming back in 2002 when Judy Baar Topinka won a third term as state treasurer. In the 13 other statewide races, whether for president, U.S. Senate or a state constitutional office, the party has fallen short.

The top-of-the-ticket has featured a conservative (Jim Ryan, who lost the 2002 governor’s race). It’s featured a moderate (Topinka, who lost the governor’s race last Tuesday). And it’s featured someone from out-of-state (Maryland’s Alan Keyes, who lost the 2004 U.S. Senate race by a record margin).

None of the approaches have worked.

And Dana Huepel reports that Mark Kirk is being mentioned a lot as the future of the Republican Party.

When asked after the election who might step into the spotlight, party leaders at first named some obvious choices: Republican legislative leaders and several candidates from this year’s election who ran statewide and lost.

But among the many names mentioned in various combinations, one made nearly every list: U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk of Highland Park.

Kirk weathered the national Democratic storm Tuesday, winning a fourth term to represent the 10th District, which runs along the lakeshore north of Chicago, with 53 percent of the vote. He is a Naval Reserve intelligence officer and served in Iraq, Haiti and Bosnia, as well as in four Navy tours at sea and three in Panama.

The 47-year-old congressman serves on the powerful House Appropriations Committee and was named one of the “28 Emerging Leaders in Congress” by Congressional Quarterly magazine.

“I tried to get Mark Kirk to run this time, and he wanted to stay in Congress,” former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar said several days after the election. “I thought he had the perfect profile to win statewide.”

The Tribune reports that Peter Roskam’s race is seen as a model for the future, but that the logic has some big holes.

McKenna points to Peter Roskam’s victory in the open-seat west suburban 6th Congressional District race against Democrat Tammy Duckworth as a template for the GOP’s future, investing in ground forces and targeted-household data-files to recruit voters.

“Peter Roskam demonstrates what can happen when you put the right kind of field organization in place and have a candidate who can win on the issues, even in suburban communities that have trended away from us,” McKenna said. “Now we’ve got to build that same thing across the state.”

Yet Roskam’s victory came in a longtime Republican congressional district less affected by Democratic gains than other suburban areas. The multimillion dollar cost to give Roskam an edge points to the difficulties that the GOP may face in years ahead.

Are there any other names you’d like to suggest?