Charlie Dent, Tuesday Group endorse Paul Ryan for House speaker

Paul Ryan told GOP lawmakers late Tuesday that he will run for speaker, but only if they embrace him by week’s end as their consensus candidate – an ambitious bid to impose unity on a disordered and divided House.

A supermajority of the House of Representatives’ firebrand conservative Republicans on Wednesday threw their support behind Paul Ryan to be the next speaker and said they have provided him enough votes to win the race.

The Freedom Caucus met behind closed doors Wednesday evening, with about two-thirds of members saying they would back Ryan, Politico reported.

Even so, the Freedom Caucus offered no known guarantees that its rebellious members would not make Ryan’s life as hard as they’d made Boehner’s, and conservative support for Ryan was not universal.

A few House conservatives said Wednesday Ryan should not take the speaker job if he’s not willing to work longer hours, weekends and spend more time away from his young family – something the Wisconsin Republican appears reluctant to do.

Ryan had said he would run for speaker if he reached the 80 percent threshold needed to score the endorsement, but it’s unclear whether he is standing by that position.

A few tea party groups and conservative commentators have pilloried his past support for easing immigration curbs and the bailout of financial institutions as the Great Recession took hold.

The 45-year-old Ryan gave his colleagues until Friday to express their support.

In their own statement, the Freedom Caucus praised Ryan as “a policy entrepreneur who has developed conservative reforms dealing with a wide variety of subjects”.

The Republican Study Committee’s 16-member steering panel voted “overwhelmingly” to endorse Ryan, according to RSC Chairman Bill Flores, R-Texas.

The Freedom Caucus has grown increasingly isolated amid the chaos, with complaints growing louder from other Republicans about their veto power over the daily workings of the House, and its next speaker. “This is one more step toward building a united Republican team”.

While caucus members said they would not be giving Ryan their endorsement, they said they believed he now had the votes to win the speakership both in the conference and on the floor.

Ryan said his stipulation for unanimous support is a direct result of the GOP infighting that has marred the House for months.

And coming votes on the debt limit and budget might be cases where Republican leaders would have to rely largely on Democratic votes to achieve their goals, a practice the Freedom Caucus strongly opposes and wants to see Ryan avoid. “If it’s not Paul Ryan, I think it would be a disaster”, he said.

Ryan did not comment on whether the majority vote was sufficient, given that he had said he wanted the endorsement of all factions of his party.

The Freedom Caucus has based its influence on maintaining its 40-plus bloc of votes – a force that nudged Speaker John A. Boehner’s early retirement and then blocked the rise of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. Radio host Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and Erick Erickson have all questioned whether he was the man best fit for the job.

Several members of the Freedom Caucus had raised concerns about Ryan and his conditions for serving as speaker, which include wanting to eliminate the procedural maneuver for removing the speaker from office.

Whether Ryan gets that support or not will become clear a day after the elections when the full House votes.