It makes sense to be pretty careful in judging how things will affect Sarah Palin. But there’s a decent argument that this is not a great night for her. Think about if Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell hadn’t won their primaries. There’s a decent chance Dems would have lost the Senate tonight. That’s a pretty big deal. She also made a late endorsement of John Raese in West Virginia. He got crushed. And perhaps most importantly, she went to war in a big way with her state’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski. She got her beat in the Republican primary. But now it’s looking like Murkowski’s quite likely to win as a write-in, which is usually pretty much impossible to pull off.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Sarah Palin will be going anywhere soon. The problem for the GOP is that the people who love her — and there are a lot of them in the GOP — really love her. And this won’t matter a bit to them. But this result is going to get a lot of talk in GOP circles. Because there’s a plausible argument that she lost them the Senate.