Pressure Mounting on Paul Ryan to Join Speaker’s Race

Pressure is mounting on Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to run for speaker of the House in the wake of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s surprising (shocking? stunning?) decision to give up his candidacy for the post.

“I would not run against Paul Ryan”, Chaffetz told reporters in Washington after a Republican House Conference meeting Friday.

Likewise, Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland said that Ryan is the clear first choice for the job.

“I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. I think he’d make a great speaker”, McCarthy said as he entered the closed-door meeting.

Even Jason Chaffetz, one of two candidates officially in the speakership race, gushed with praise for the man many hope will take the reins.

The process of finding a successor to John Boehner was thrown into chaos yesterday, when the front-runner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, announced he was abandoning his campaign for the post. He also suggested McCarthy has poor communication skills and would not actively promote the party’s agenda.

And addressing rumors that he might step down as majority leader, McCarthy told his fellow Republicans he plans to remain in the job, a source in the room said.

“Two people now have taken themselves out of the running”, said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.

“Some folks feel like they don’t have a voice at the table”, said Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, which before the Freedom Caucus was created was the organization of conservative lawmakers.

Westmoreland was House Republican Leader in the Georgia Senate Legislature back in 2001 during a very tumultuous time, when many Georgia politicians were switching parties.

Many GOP lawmakers have received emails in recent days from Steven Baer, a conservative activist from Chicago, alleging that McCarthy and Ellmers had an extramarital affair while they served in the House.

The House No. 3, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, said he’d like to see Ryan the next speaker.

But with Congress embarking on a week-long recess, there was no sign of any move from Ryan, a USA vice presidential candidate in the 2012 general election, or of any other development that could bring order to the Republican Party’s disarray in the lower chamber of Congress.

House Republicans are angrily divided, and no faction is blameless. “I have always put this conference ahead of myself”.

One, favored by the most conservative wing of the House, is Webster, who has often said he would assemble “a principle-based, member-driven caucus”. “A few of my colleagues thinks we ought to just stand aside and watch the Republicans have this fight but bottom line I think it’s really important that we get this place operating”, he said.