Eric Krol’s Friday column takes a look at winners and losers. Here are two of his losers:

Newspaper editorial boards and crusading columnists. The old-fashioned journalistic campaigns against Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Cook County Board President-elect Todd Stroger certainly fell flat, didn’t they? It’s going to be a long four years for print reporters covering Blagojevich.

Illinois voters. They told pollsters corruption was their top issue, then re-elected Blagojevich, whose administration is engulfed in scandal probes, and picked Stroger, whose father’s administration faces a federal probe.

Krol also tagged the Illinois Republican Party as a loser, which is pretty obvious. Chicago Sun-Times editorial page editor Steve Huntley talked to House Republican Leader Tom Cross and offers some thoughts on what the IL GOP needs to do now.

What Cross doesn’t say outright is that the social conservatives’ message won’t pass muster with the middle-of-the-road voters who constitute the majority of the Illinois electorate. Moderate voters see hard right positions opposing stem cell research and advocating the teaching of creationism in school science classes as an offensive intrusion of religious values into medical science and public education.

Teaching intelligent design in a school science lab makes as much sense as having Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species required reading in Sunday school. Opposing embryonic stem cell research on the grounds that a microscopic collection of cells is a fully realized human being, a person, comes across as a cruel denial of medical hope to millions of people suffering chronic and fatal diseases.

The social conservatives’ objections on stem cell science hinge, of course, on abortion. They must have been jolted by the rejection of a stringent abortion ban by voters in South Dakota, a red state. Yes, many Americans have qualms about abortion, but when confronted with the uncomfortable choice of no restrictions on abortions vs. a complete government intrusion into private life, most people will opt for less government. You’d think that’s a position conservatives would understand.

Its message is a major reason that the GOP has a gender gap. Cross said the party needs to reach out to women and ethnic and minority groups.

Discuss. But do it quickly, ‘cuz later today I’ll be shutting down comments for the weekend so I can finally escape this blog.