Bost says Ryan could unite Republicans — News Analysis

It doesn’t seem likely that the Freedom Caucus would be part of such a coalition. One is that no one will command a majority in the divided GOP caucus anytime soon and that Speaker Boehner will have an extended interim run as speaker. With a budget deal no where in sight yet, he is thought to be prepared to move a standalone debt ceiling bill, which would pass with a mix of Democratic and Republican votes.

But there is always the possibility that Ryan could stay on as speaker into the next Congress and push his pro-immigration agenda with the help of a new president, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes legal status for undocumented immigrants.

The Freedom Caucus is many things, but it is not strategic.

“I’ve met with a lot of conservative Republicans over the last four days, and they are not happy”, Nunes said. The biggest beneficiaries were the National Republican Congressional Committee, which raises funds to support the party’s nominees, and Boehner’s own accounts that aided others. “No decisions have been made, but a resolution on the debt ceiling is certainly possible”, said a Boehner spokesperson.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation”, last Sunday, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-South Carolina, said his Freedom Caucus peers are more concerned about the next speaker’s commitments than his record.

“That 30, under no circumstances are they willing to compromise”, he said, adding that he shares many of their core principles.

Personally I credit leader McCarthy with recognizing that we need someone to unite a fractured House and for putting aside the typical thirst for power many have for such a lofty position.

“He’s a great communicator, the kind of messenger I think our party needs”, Jordan said of Ryan, who is being urged by many colleagues to seek the job.

The personal and political downsides are plentiful as well: Time away from his young family, having to relinquish his dream job as Ways and Means Committee chairman, and dealing with the same group of hardcore conservative agitators that drove out Boehner and dashed his close friend McCarthy’s dreams of becoming Speaker. But for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over these obstinate conservatives, the fact is that their existence and influence are proof that a segment of the GOP base has exhausted of the party leadership’s capitulations to Democrats in the empty name of demonstrating that Republicans can “govern”.

The question remains of interest, even though Ryan has said he is not interested in a job that would put him second in line to succeed the president. Before arriving on Capitol Hill in 2013, he served in the Florida legislature for 28 years and served for two of those years as House speaker.

Boehner announced in September that he planned to retire from Congress on October. 30. They got their shutdown, and they got their Benghazi select committee – which McCarthy, in an unwise moment of honesty last week, acknowledged was for the goal of damaging Hillary Clinton politically.

Accept the GOP nomination to be speaker – he’d still have to be elected by the whole House – and he’d immediately earn the gratitude of his now-tattered party. Another Republican was later stripped of his subcommittee gavel after he voted against a procedural motion on trade bills.

Forty-five percent of Americans continue to have an unfavorable view of the Republican leader, but that is down from 54 percent.

In recent weeks, a number of legislators have said they’ll run for House speaker – but only if Ryan does not.

“Paul’s record has clearly established that he is in the liberal half of the Republican conference”. House Republicans will vote privately first before the full House votes on the floor.

“The speaker’s really in a position now where he can’t get anything done”, said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author with Ornstein of It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, a 2012 book on congressional dysfunction.