GOP chairman on McCarthy’s comments: ‘Kevin screwed up’

But earlier this year, Webster surprised many in the Republican conference when he launched an 11th-hour bid for the speakership in an attempt to remove Boehner as House speaker.

“It is more important than ever that we have strong conservative leadership in the House of Representatives”, Cheney said.

After telling reporters they don’t want to back a Speaker of the House candidate aligned with departing Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on Wednesday declared the group will support outsider Daniel Webster for the job. That leaves the California Republican the heavy favorite when GOP lawmakers choose their candidate to replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner on Thursday. The FC wants seats on the Steering Committee, which determines the make-up of other House committees, to make sure that conservatives have a few influence over the workings of the House.

The lawmakers agreed that the entire caucus would remain unified in support of Mr. Webster, providing him at least 30 votes when the full Republican conference meets Thursday to select the party’s nominee for speaker.

“I can not imagine a scenario in which a divisive intraparty election for leadership is a good thing for Republicans”, says John Hudak, a governance studies fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“There’s not 218 [votes] for McCarthy or for anyone”, Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas told the meeting.

McCarthy, who has been endorsed by Boehner, is seen as the front-runner in the speaker’s race.

Such chicanery, it was suggested, might include Democrats putting their support behind one of the Republican candidates rather than automatically giving a losing vote to current minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Kevin McCarthy might walk away tomorrow with more votes than anyone else behind closed doors, but he may not have enough votes for what matters, the speaker’s election on October 29. “I’m not sure the freedom caucus will like those discussions, but I know that Democrats are ready to vote “present”.

The Agenda Project Action Fund launched a public demand campaign calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation into House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Benghazi committee.

“We are in one of the most hard and challenging periods of our history”.

One of his challengers is House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz from Utah, a congressman who has questioned the existence of the IFI. Now, they are maneuvering to deny his No. 2, McCarthy, the chance to ascend unless he agrees to various demands.

The Freedom Caucus is comprised of conservatives sympathetic to the small-government Tea Party movement.

Phase III, according to a Washington Post report, is likely to include a Democratic member filing “a privileged resolution that could call for a rebuke of Kevin McCarthy over his gaffe and/or for disbanding the Benghazi panel”.

The political wrangling follows remarks by U.S. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy last week saying the taxpayer-funded investigation had hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton as she seeks her party’s presidential nomination.