Paul Ryan announces run for US House Speaker

FOX 6 Now is reporting that Ryan, R-Janesville, declared his candidacy Thursday evening.

Powell said part of the reason Ryan has been such a popular choice to fill the speaker role is because he is a “compromise candidate” between the different Republican factions. Ryan told Republican colleagues that he is “ready and eager” to serve and pledged that if he could unify the party in the House, he “would go all in”.

“I believe we are ready to move forward as one, united team”.

That might change if Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin becomes speaker of the House.

Ryan secured the last endorsement of the three caucuses on Thursday afternoon, October 22, 2015 with hours to spare before his Friday deadline.

He also gained support, as expected, from the larger Republican Study Committee, and the more moderate Tuesday Group.

“As Ways and Means Chairman and Budget Chairman, Paul Ryan has demonstrated an ability to lead and work with Texans on those committees and with the Texas delegation as a whole”, Barton said. “Paul is a policy entrepreneur who has developed conservative reforms dealing with a wide variety of subjects, and he has promised to be an ideas-focused speaker who will advance limited government principles and devolve power to the membership”. In their statement the group expressed, “Paul has always been a thoughtful leader and reformer in Washington, a unifier in the House Republican caucus”.

CHANG: So, the Freedom Caucus has this internal rule that in order to officially endorse someone, it needs 80 percent of its members on board. The group made a decision to hold off their endorsement until after the RFC had voted to not dissuade the Freedom Caucus’ support.

But others in the Freedom Caucus anxious that the fight had gone on too long, hurting their party and alienating voters in a critical election cycle. So there won’t be much of a ramp-up time for Ryan should he become speaker. Ryan said he wanted to scrap the vacate-the-chair motion; the Freedom Caucus said, “Nope”; and Ryan responded, “Well, we’ll figure it out later”.

And Ryan’s own GOP caucus in the House is beset by tactical differences over how far to go in pushing an agenda that can’t get past the veto pen of a Democratic president and the 60-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate enshrined by the filibuster rule.

In 2007, Ryan voted for the controversial Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a pro-homosexual bill that forces employers to hire homosexuals or risk lawsuits and federal penalties.

“…So we will look forward to welcoming him and see if in fact if that all works out in the next few days”. It’s a job the 45-year-old never wanted but is exploring, he says, out of a sense of duty after Boehner announced his resignation and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy abruptly withdrew from the running to replace him.

The GOP’s 2012 vice presidential nominee didn’t initially seek the office, which has been a lightning rod for just about every grievance in the party’s rank and file – especially among its hard-core factions who think that shutting down the government is the only way to gets things done.