Congress Looking For A New Speaker

The pressure is on Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2012, to run for House speaker in the chaotic aftermath of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s sudden decision to abandon his campaign for the post.

“Paul Ryan is a good man. He’s a great communicator, the kind of messenger I think our party needs”.

The approximately 40 members of the House Freedom Caucus endorsed House speaker candidate Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., before Leader Kevin McCarthy abruptly exited the race Thursday.

Johnson said if Ryan realizes that no one else can unite Republicans, he may choose to do it. Being speaker would be hard for Ryan, given the time and travel demands of the job and the fact that Ryan has a young family in Janesville, Johnson said.

“I wouldn’t presume to tell Paul what to do, but I do know that he is a man of ideas who is driven to see them applied for the public good”, Romney said in a statement yesterday.

And there is another layer of uncertainty when it comes to Republican leadership in the House.

Mr Issa said that if Ryan declines, he himself might seek the job to replace retiring House Speaker John Boehner. “Even though Republicans are in charge of the Senate, we still need a half-dozen votes to move legislation”, referring to the six Democratic votes needed to reach 60.

I’d like to tell you I’m shocked, saddened, and dismayed that no one wants to be Speaker of the House.

Boehner made a plea for unity at a closed-door meeting of House Republicans, urging members to “truly listen to each other and have an open mind about how we can come together”, according to a source in the room. Other Republicans fear, however, that such changes would make the House even more ungovernable than it already is.

“They think we should be more compromising”, said DesJarlais, noting that he must represent expectations from his constituents in Tennessee, which includes Rutherford County.

“Don’t know yet”, is what Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., told NPR’s Scott Simon in an interview on Saturday.

He said Mr. Boehner, R-Ohio, is expected to stay on past his announced retirement date of October 30 if a new speaker isn’t elected by then, and Mr. McCarthy is staying on as majority leader. After McCarthy dropped out, Ryan said he might reconsider his refusal.

But Ryan stood firm in his refusal to run for the job, as he left the Capitol to return to Wisconsin yesterday afternoon.

“I don’t understand why we didn’t vote yesterday”, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said.

“Are we going to just change the personalities in the speakership?”

Attempting to calm the waters, 19 Republicans including several committee chairs wrote GOP lawmakers that they shouldn’t pick a speaker until agreeing on “a shared set of goals and governing vision that benefits the nation and our constituents”. They want to permanently transform the power structure of the House GOP so that the (more conservative) rank and file can have greater authority, thus upending a decades-long strengthening of the office.