*** George Will: Political 'market' worked. ***

George Will, the Columnist of the Wahington Post fame, has a wonderful look on the events of election night disaster for Republicans. Read political 'market' place. Here are excerpts: At least Republicans now know where "the bridge to nowhere" leads: to the political wilderness. But there are three reasons for conservatives to temper their despondency. First, Republicans were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism. Second, they admire market rationality, and the political market has worked. Third, on various important fronts, conservatism continued its advance Tuesday. ... Of course, the election-turning issue was not that $223 million bridge in Alaska, or even the vice of which it is emblematic -- incontinent spending by a Republican-controlled Congress trying to purchase permanent power. Crass spending (the farm and highway bills, the nearly eightfold increase in the number of earmarks since 1994) and other pandering (e.g., the Terri Schiavo intervention) has intensified as Republicans' memories of why they originally sought power have faded. But Republicans sank beneath the weight of Iraq, the lesson of which is patent: Wars of choice should be won swiftly rather than lost protractedly. ... The Iraq War, like the Alaska bridge, pungently proclaims how Republicans earned their rebuke. They are guilty of apostasy from conservative principles at home (frugality, limited government) and embrace of anti-conservative principles abroad (nation-building grandiosity pursued incompetently). ... The country remains receptive to conservatism. That doctrine -- were it to become constraining on, rather than merely avowed by, congressional Republicans -- can be their bridge back from the wilderness.