"Oh, the humanity!"

Clearly, Democrats need to have a cork placed on the business end of each of their forks.

I'm guessing the publicity surrounding this fight will set back Congressional Democrats by 3-5 points in the generic preference polls. Democrats should be grateful no one was paying attention to this fight before the midterm election.

Yes, indeed. The citizens of our great republic have been watching this shootout with rapt attention and anxiety. "Who will fill the roles of House majority leader and whip?" they asked themselves last night, glancing nervously about.

Ah, but thank God, our long national nightmare has ended.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 — House Democrats chose Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland as their majority leader today after a bruising fight that cast a cloud over the party’s post-election celebration.

The election of Mr. Hoyer over Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, by a vote of 149 to 86, was an embarrassing setback for Representative Nancy J. Pelosi of California, who will be speaker of the House in the new Congress and had backed Mr. Murtha.

Mr. Hoyer, 67, is in his 13th term in Congress and his second as party whip under Ms. Pelosi, who has been Democratic minority leader and was put in line to become speaker when Democrats regained control of the House in last week’s elections.

After the vote, Ms. Pelosi smiled broadly and offered “great congratulations” to Mr. Hoyer. “I look forward to working with him in a very unified way to bring our country to a new direction for all Americans, not just the privileged few,” Ms. Pelosi said.

“We’ve had our debates,” she said. “We’ve had our disagreements in that room, and now that is over. As I said to my colleagues, as we say in church, let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with us. Let the healing begin.”

May we now stop the handwringing? The press -- with the aid of Democratic political observers, craving renewed relevance -- have been gleefully writing about how this has blunted the party's momentum of last week; that the public -- who are barely able to tell us who their congressmen is, let alone name the majority leader -- is once again witnessing a party whose members just can't help but draw knives on one another.

Enough. We should be focused on the apparent political rehabilitation of the Republican party's favorite Dixiecrat.