So this is what it took for the U.S. House to finally show a little bipartisanship: Eight Republicans and 208 Democrats on Tuesday metaphorically linked arms to oust Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from office, a historic first. Kumbaya, America.

Even in hindsight, it remains difficult to see what McCarthy's nine-month odyssey through a political hell of his own construction accomplished — or was ever going to accomplish — other than inspiring some priceless internet memes. ("GOP learns the hard way," offers one: "Turning the base up too high blows out your Speaker.")

Official Washington and its media will spend the coming days and weeks microscopically analyzing what Tuesday's drama says about American politics. But from out here in the Heartland, a few takeaways are already as clear as a Missouri highway billboard:

— Those who cravenly seek power for its own sake, instead of for the good of the country, will not ultimately serve the good of the country.

That sounds obvious, but apparently wasn't obvious enough back in early January. McCarthy's cravenness was laid bare for the whole country to see back then, when he endured an unprecedented 14 failed votes among his fellow representatives before finally groveling enough to his own party's extremists to secure his long-sought speakership on the 15th ballot.

Anyone who would invite that level of humiliation to gain power shouldn't have it — for the simple reason that they would clearly do almost anything to keep it. As McCarthy promptly proceeded to demonstrate.

— In politics, the opposite of compromise isn't principle, it's paralysis.

The various hoops McCarthy was forced to jump through in his ultimately doomed quest to keep his speakership — including the baseless and pathetic impeachment inquiry against President Biden — had a common theme: His MAGA taskmasters were insistent that he do nothing resembling compromise or cooperation with Democrats (or even to moderate Republicans), on anything, ever.

Witness the result in a House session that achieved almost nothing beyond kangaroo-court committee investigations of the Biden administration and tenuous crisis control with the Republican caucus. Your tax dollars very much not at work.

— Placating political extremists doesn't tame them, it inflames them.

McCarthy broke the blockade to win his seat by neutering his own speakership before it began. In agreeing to allow just one member to call for his removal at any time — in the shadow of a wafer-thin GOP House majority, among them the reptilian Rep. Matt Gaetz and his handful of right-wing extremist cohorts — McCarthy all but guaranteed it would end like this.

In the interim, his wince-inducing attempts to appease the Chaos Caucus only encouraged them to demand more. Gaetz's infamous gloat during the January speakership fight ("I'm running out of stuff to ask for") became the template for McCarthy's entire tenure.

At the height of last week's budget impasse, more than a few pundits suggested that America was headed toward a "Seinfeld shutdown" — a government shutdown about nothing — citing Gaetz & Co.'s incoherent, even-shifting list of demands. It was obvious that what they mostly wanted was a shutdown itself, as a performative expression of their political nihilism.

When McCarthy finally did what he should have done in the first place, and reached across the aisle to secure a temporary agreement to keep the government operating for the next six weeks, his fate was sealed. How dare he give so much as the time of day to the party that controls the presidency, the Senate and almost half the House, fumed the Gaetz brigade. What does he think this is, a constitutional democracy?

Contrary to some Republicans' curious take on things, House Democrats' refusal to bail out McCarthy was less an expression of grubby partisanship than a nod to experience: McCarthy has already demonstrated, multiple times, his willingness to abandon any political good faith, with pretty much anyone, the moment it becomes inconvenient. Democrats owed him nothing, and had nothing to gain by rescuing a speaker who has repeatedly displayed a gelatinous spine in the face of his own party's worst elements.

A sorrier example of reflexive and unconstructive partisanship was the appalling fact that among the very first actions by acting Speaker Patrick McHenry of North Carolina on Tuesday was to order Nancy Pelosi out of the Capitol office reserved for immediate past speakers, evicting her even as she was attending services for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein in California. Only the most petty-minded partisan could possibly think that was the most pressing business facing the chamber at that moment.

In the midst of January's floor fight over the speaker's gavel, when it was not yet at all assured McCarthy would secure it, this page argued that the narrow division of government today "is voters' message to both sides to move to the middle and find ways to compromise."

"Sadly, the Republicans who control the next steps are in no mood to move their party toward the moderate middle, no matter what message American voters have sent," we wrote. "... History is replete with examples of why placating extremists can only lead to disaster. McCarthy seems intent on repeating that history nonetheless."

It would be nice to think some special prescience was at play there, but we claim no crystal ball. That assessment was a statement of the glaringly obvious. It still is.

Yet two of the top names now in contention to replace McCarthy as speaker — Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio — are among the most extremist, hyper-partisan House members outside the klatch that rebelled Tuesday.

And so America faces the prospect of history repeating itself. Again.

The federal budget impasse averted Saturday will resume in less than 45 days. Continued funding for Ukraine's resistance to Russian aggression will run out before that without a separate funding agreement. A new COVID strain is on the rise.

And half of Congress will likely remain in thrall to a political movement that is less interested in solving problems than exploiting them for ideological leverage. The hapless McCarthy was a passing symptom of his party's extremism. Only the voters can finally cure it.

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