It is over for the Republicans. In the past weeks I’ve downplayed the scandals that have hurt the right, arguing they’d calm down by election day. On October 9 I gave this qualification: “unless the media manages to keep [the scandal] up.”

Well, they have, and if this story is true, it’s not because of liberal bias. Apparently, the Republican-controlled government put nuclear weapons secrets on a publicly available Web site. The paper found out the week before an important election. Brilliant.

I’m not one for making predictions, as I’m not clairvoyant, but many analyses were predicting — even before tonight — that the Dems would at least take the House. That seems all but certain now. Depending on how the right responds to this the Senate could still be up for grabs. Kerry’s comments probably helped some (read my Weekly Standard piece on that matter here).

Now, it’s not all bad for conservatives, libertarians and the like. There’s always the hope that an election loss will get Republicans to shape up — the party hasn’t exactly been standing for conservative principles lately. And Ann Coulter’s brilliant, unique column this week pointed out that, even by the wildest projections, Democrats will not win anywhere near as many seats as sixth-year opposition parties have in the past (that one goes into the “why didn’t I think of that” file). So no matter what, historical statistics will show Republicans did better than they’d been predicted.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.