McCarthy tells GOP conservatives ‘I’m not John Boehner’

Democrats are squarely behind Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California as their nominee, but that choice nearly certainly will not survive a vote of the full House, where the GOP holds its biggest majority in decades.

“Speaker John Boehner is considering delaying the internal election for House majority leader and majority whip, leaving only the party vote for speaker to be decided on Thursday, according to multiple Republican sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations”, Politico’s Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Lauren French report.

Chaffetz said he’ll endorse McCarthy if he emerges from the GOP conference election as the frontrunner.

Pennsylvania Reps. Keith Rothfus, R-Sewickly, and Scott Perry, R-York, were among the members who had complained that the decision should not be rushed. The speaker is the only job in the House that’s voted on by members of both parties in open session; the other jobs are selected internally by the party caucuses. Their task is simple: nominate the GOP’s next Speaker. 11, unencumbered with conservative proposals to defund Planned Parenthood.

McCarthy remains the favorite and has Boehner’s support, but conservatives say they will not back him unless they’re convinced he’ll take the House in a new direction.

But that dynamic began to shift, particularly following McCarthy’s gaffe last week suggesting that the objective of a special House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks on the USA mission in Benghazi, Libya, was to drive down Hillary Rodham Clinton’s poll numbers.

“Everybody thought Hilllary Clinton was unbeatable, right?”

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., another McCarthy supporter, said on ABC’s “This Week” that McCarthy’s comments over Benghazi amounted to “a tempest in a teapot”.

In passing the measure, House Republicans rejected that claim, arguing that the authorization bill fully funds military requests and mistakenly shifts what should be appropriations fights to the policy-focused authorization bill.

Conservatives may take issue with McCarthy’s principles, but they still find him preferable to Boehner.

Chaffetz, who didn’t announce his bid until Sunday, acknowledged he’s the long-shot candidate and said he would endorse the nominee on Thursday instead of trying to make a play for the position during the floor vote.

Chaffetz, a Mormon who worked in the private sector before being elected to Congress in 2008, has a pretty good conservative record.

He said, however, that he was better than McCarthy at “going on-camera and going before the media”.

In short order Sunday, McCarthy’s allies circulated a list of Chaffetz’s comments, such as his refusal to rule out an effort to impeach President Barack Obama. As if that were the reason the committee was created in the first place.

“A lot of people think he’s already too closely aligned with Boehner”, Mr. O’Connell said. He has worked against government waste and abuse, and his uncompromising style would be a welcome addition to a Republican leadership that so far has done little with its power to make any meaningful change in Washington. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) penned an op-ed in support of McCarthy, insisting that McCarthy “demonstrates a rare combination of principle, leadership, and effectiveness”. Now, Chaffetz is one of three candidates running for House speaker, challenging Boehner-endorsed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.