7 January—Congratulations are in order for Republican Congressman George Santos. Early this morning, not long after Kevin “I never give up” McCarthy finally grabbed hold of the Speaker of the House’s gavel, George, along with a House-ful of fellow masters of mendaciloquence, took the oath of office for the 118^th Congress. He’ll be right at home. And he’ll stay there. And he’ll probably represent his constituents as well as any of his colleagues.

Congrats to Kevin, too, because he didn’t in fact give up in the face of intense opposition from the wrong wing of the Republican party and was able to achieve most of the power he was lusting after simply by making an excess of concessions and garnering only 216 votes.

It’s said that politics is the art of compromise. That’s a very nice way of putting it.

The House has 435 voting members, making a bare majority 218. To be elected, however, the Speaker needs a majority only of votes actually cast. Thus, Kevin was able to slither through with 216 votes through tactical finagling of “absent” votes of members who were actually present but not counted in the tally. And doubtless promised a lot.

(The House has six non-voting members, by the way, Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner and delegates from the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Representation for Indian tribes is being considered. What’s next?)

Of course, none of the Democrats, all of whom must have been present for the vote, were allowed by their leader or whip to vote for McCarthy. Not that they would have, to be sure, in the current political climate. In the first ballot, in fact, Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader, got all 212 Democrat votes to Kevin’s embarrassing 203 Republican votes.

A positive of Kevin McCarthy’s struggle for the gavel is that we’ve been able to witness at least some of the shenanigans involved in the process. Kevin’s immediate predecessors, Republican John Boehner and Democrat Nancy Pelosi, most likely had to do a lot of horse trading just like Kevin. But they were able to keep it in the back room.

Now that both houses of Congress are sworn and ready to go, let’s hope the Senate kills all the crap the House comes up with and the House kills all the crap the Senate comes up with. It’s good to have houses with opposing majorities . . .