McCarthy, now the House majority leader, remains the favorite for speaker, but many conservatives have reservations and doubt the affable 50-year-old Californian has the votes to win.
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Chaffetz, the 48-year-old chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has used that post to launch high-profile investigations of the Secret Service, Planned Parenthood and other issues.
Chaffetz indicated he sympathized with McCarthy for what he said was a mistake. “But they didn’t send us here to perpetuate the status quo”. He called for abandoning the Iran nuclear deal; providing lethal aid to Ukraine against Russian Federation; and expanding use of Special Forces and airstrikes against the Islamic State – and a US-enforced no-fly zone over Northern Syria to protect refugees and “rebooted” Syrian rebels who would fight Islamic terrorists and the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The next speaker should have the conservative “vision thing”, and be able to express it clearly to the American people. None of the rising conservative stars ended up mounting a bid for speaker, and they’ve so far have been unable to coalesce around any of the announced candidates, despite an effort to learn from the past and avoid internal divisions. After his announcement, he told Fox News Sunday he thought he could “bridge the divide” between the hard right and centrist segments of the house GOP. “And I think that’s a case that he does have to make”.
But McCarthy has well over the 125 GOP votes needed to secure his conference’s nomination to be a candidate for Speaker during a vote on the House floor later this month. “It’s time for a fresh start”. “An affirmative vote for this plan…is a specific intent to disfavor me as an incumbent”. “That a promotion of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to speaker is being seriously discussed by leadership allies demonstrates how little they have learned from recent events”, Amash wrote. “He’s big reason why we are in the majority”.
“I think it’s wrong to signal that you’re going to cave in the end”, Chaffetz said when asked about McConnell’s promise. “I am not there to perpetuate the status quo”. But Chaffetz says it’s just business. “That is not what we were elected to do”. Mr. Webster, who is only in his third term, is relatively unknown in the halls of Congress, but has experience as speaker of the Florida House. “We don’t seem to win the argument, and that’s a problem”. That would be Tea Party-backed U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. “And wouldn’t it be wonderful to have someone from Utah?”
Justin Harding, Gov. Gary Herbert’s chief of staff and a former chief of staff to Chaffetz, said the congressman would not enter the race without great consideration.
“He wasn’t too happy”, Chaffetz recalled to a group of reporters.
“It means that there’s a pyramid of power with a few people at the top of that pyramid making all the decisions”, he said.
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As the U.S. Congress on Tuesday moved toward passing a short-term funding bill to avert government shutdowns this week, House Speaker John Boehner left open the possibility of tackling major fiscal measures in October, including raising the nation’s borrowing limit.
