Round of applause, fellas. There’s a reason Congress has such a low approval rating, and it’s for events of political theater like the one that unfolded Tuesday evening in the U.S. House. Maybe it’s because we’re friendly with partisans of both sides, and they all get fired up about this, but it seems to us that after the initial kerfuffle, this thing should have gone away.

Let’s recap: During President Barack Obama‘s health care address, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson yelled, “You lie!” from the House floor. It shouldn’t have happened, it allowed a lot of people to throw jokes at his expense and poke fun. Great, that’s fine — he brought it on himself. Then, Wilson called Obama chief of staff and professional ball-breaker Rahm Emanuel to apologize.

Seems like that would work. A two-day story.

But, oh, this is American politics, and one turn deserves another, like a never-ending series of attacks reminiscent of August 1914. Liberals fired back, raising bank for challenger Rob Miller‘s campaign. Wilson’s people countered, developing T-shirts and doing fundraising of their own. There were demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. There were clowns. Add into the mix an endless amount of sniping over the Internet.

What is the Democratic majority to do? We thought it was great that the Democrats picked a woman as its first speaker of the house in 12 years. Not so happy that it was Nancy Pelosi. For one reason or another, she never struck us as someone that you’d want in the leadership. But, it is what it is.

Sprinkle into the mix some classic South Carolina battles. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn commented in a story recently that he was none too happy that Wilson held a town hall meeting at Keenan High School, in the Sixth District. Whether that was a part of it or not, it was reported by a Politico reporter on C-SPAN today that Pelosi wasn’t initially behind the idea of a resolution, and it was Clyburn who lobbied for the resolution.

So, there we were, ’round 5 p.m., watching the House going through the roll call vote. In the end, the resolution passed, 240-179. Expect a continuing amount of warring against the 12 Democrats that voted against and the seven Republicans that voted for the resolution, including U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, who is in a tough primary fight to save his seat.

The play was called by the Democrats, so we’ll analyze what they could, or could not have done, in the situation. There are a number of factors to take into consideration, but it should be split on external and internal lines.

Externally speaking, they should have let it go. Yeah, let the netroots and the grassroots and every other roots complain and raise money and put up blog posts and hold rallies. They do that pretty well. Have the House Caucus issue a statement saying that you deplore the congressman’s actions, but respect his apology, and that it’s the party’s intention to move on and pass meaningful health care reform. Done. The House Dems look good, and seem like they have their eyes on the ball. May cost with the die-hards, but they’re never happy, anyway.

Internally speaking, Pelosi had to act. House Democrats watched for eight years while they saw Republicans hold the line for President George W. Bush. If the Dems didn’t do something that is ultimately a pretty petty thing, it would seem like they were weak. And, this is Washington politics — it’s like the African plains. The weak get eaten by the lions. Also, it was a way of telling Obama that the House has his back. Internal politics, it can be a bastard.

And so it is. In the insular, high school-like world of Capitol Hill, the House Dems didn’t have perspective — at least, that’s the way it looks from South Carolina. They did a very red meat thing in the middle of debating one of the biggest issues of the last century.

So, here we go again. This story will probably run another week or two before the next scandal or catastrophe, and there will be more claims of Marxism and racism thrown around and maybe, at some point, we can finally get to the bottom of the health care problem in our country.

But that didn’t happen today.

The fraudy leprechaun of a former football coach Lou Holtz likes his gig at ESPN too much to to for Congress, declaring, “I’m working for ESPN. I don’t want to run for Congress. All I’m going to do is fulfill the commitment to ESPN. I’m prepared for it and then we’ll go from there.”

The incumbent representative he would have challenged is FL-24′s Suzanne Kosmas, a Democrat in what’s considered a marginally Republican district. It was the the dominion of former Fla. Speaker of the House Tom Feeney, but she knocked him off by an incredible 16 percent. That pretty much sucked for him, who drew the district for himself with the Sunshine State received two more U.S. House districts in the 2000 census.

It’s a common assumption that most football coaches are conservatives, except for Texas Tech’s Mike Leach, who leans toward piracy. And, Bear Bryant was close friends with Bobby Kennedy. Still, it didn’t go so well with his last major foray into politics when he publicly endorsed then-U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

It was December 1983, and Holtz had just been named the Golden Gophers’ new head coach, having resigned under pressure as coach of Arkansas the week before. People attributed his departure to two commercials in which he endorsed Sen. Jesse Helms, the onetime Dixiecrat whom Holtz met while coaching at North Carolina State and who is probably still race-mongering in some integrated corner of hell. Here’s how one book put it:

“Lou’s old friend Jesse was conducting a one-man filibuster against the establishment of Martin Luther King Day while the Arkansas staff was calling black mothers trying to recruit their sons. Lou wasn’t that political. He just liked being invited to the White House and knowing powerful friends.”

We doubt Holtz ever said anything racist or had thoughts of the like. Doesn’t seem the sort. But it did show a particular brand of boneheadedness that he didn’t consider Helms’ reputation on race issues when he’s having to convince, as written above, black parents to let him direct their son over four years away from home.

So, a multi-ethnic place like Orlando probably wouldn’t roll with that. He would have also been the fourth Republican in the race, though with name ID, his own bankroll and an ability to fundraise from several devoted college football fan bases, he would have been a prohibitive favorite to win the nomination. We would have given him five points and an over/under of 43.5.