Jason Chaffetz makes bid for House speaker

The same House conservatives who not so quietly helped push out Speaker John Boehner have been tight-lipped about whom they want to replace him.

Boehner’s successor will nearly certainly be Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who was one of the self-declared “young guns” of the House, a posse that also included House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan and former Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia.

But most famously, Chaffetz has wrangled with another part of the Department of Homeland Security: the Secret Service. He doubts Boehner’s right-hand man can get enough conservatives to win a final floor vote for speaker without having to rely on Democrats. “We don’t seem to win the argument, and that’s a problem”. “That’s what we are going to have to overcome”. And while California Republican Kevin McCarthy, now in the No. 2 post, is likely to take the reigns as speaker, there’s a battle for other positions, and a top Texan is involved. Cantor, the then-majority leader, was defeated in 2014 by economics professor and now-Freedom Caucus member Dave Brat.

A McCarthy spokesman declined to comment Sunday on Chaffetz.

The other candidate is conservative Representative Daniel Webster of Florida. This is a national wave, it’s not something that was driven by Jason Chaffetz. “So the question is, would the rest of the group come along and support?” he said. “Or do we need to leave a backdoor open and create a vulnerability for all of them?” Although that’s unlikely given the recent past, here’s hoping its most intractable members heed his words, if not their own outgoing speaker’s final and telling gesture. He presides over the House as an administrator and as his party’s leader.

“There there will be a realization at a few point he can’t get to 218”, Chaffetz said of McCarthy.

Chaffetz, 48, of Utah, rose quickly to committee leadership after being elected in 2008.

How far Chaffetz takes his leadership bid is one of the key questions facing Republicans this week.

Chaffetz eventually returned Meadows his chairmanship. McCarthy said Tuesday on Fox News. “I can’t – it’s not my job to tell them”. “How will you treat people fairly?”

McCarthy retracted the comment and said he regrets it, but it’s given a potent weapon to Democrats ahead of a high-profile October 22 appearance by Clinton before the committee. I don’t hold anything against Jason.

As Oversight panel chairman, he tried to remove Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina conservative, from his post atop the Oversight subcommittee on government operations. “And that could be an ugly situation”, he said.

This person is plainly not a fan, but nor are other Republican congressmen who roll their eyes about caucus members who lecture them about the Constitution and rant about the debt.

“I am not looking for a unicorn to become the next President or next Speaker”, Mr. Zeldin said.

It’s no coincidence that all three of the leading GOP presidential candidates have never held elective office. The political roadblocks to the GOP agenda frustrate him, too, but anger clouds their judgment, he says.

“I’m not behind, but I have a lot of ground to cover”, he said. “The process is broken”.

A day after announcing his candidacy for speaker, Chaffetz sought to present himself Monday as a new face who can unite the House. Many in Washington are quaking over the deadlines. We got beat up for voting for Boehner before. “Conservatives and centrists alike are interested in changing the structure of the way the conference is run and the way the House is operated”.

He called for putting a “limited numbers of U.S. Special Forces personnel on the ground” in Iraq, establishing a no-fly zone in northern Syria, and providing “more effective support to the Iraqi Army, Sunni, and Kurdish units directly engaged in the fight”.