They want to take it to a high bar.
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What he achieved was a truce between disgruntled conservatives and a GOP leadership desperate to get the House back on track.
Mr. Boehner, who will retire from Congress at the end of the month, was under continual threat of a challenge to his speakership.
But Ryan succeeded over the past 48 hours in wringing pledges of support from every major faction of the divided House GOP, including the hardline Freedom Caucus, whose support was far from assured given its rebellious members were responsible for forcing Boehner to the exits and cowing McCarthy, his most likely successor.
“We have an opportunity to turn the page, to start with a clean slate, and to rebuild what has been lost”, Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, said in a letter to fellow Republicans late Thursday that formally announced his candidacy.
“After talking with so many of you, and hearing your words of encouragement, I believe we are ready to move forward as a one, united team”, he wrote.
Best said he thinks Ryan would make a better speaker than Boehner because he has better communication skills.
When pressed on whether Ryan is the right leader to fix the problems plaguing the House of Representatives, Loudermilk claimed Ryan is “frustrated” too with the current “top down approach” and would like to see it flipped upside down. “What I told members is, if you can agree to these requests and if I can truly be a unifying figure, then I will gladly serve, and if I am not unifying, that is fine as well – I will be happy to stay where I am”. Flores called Ryan’s budgets “transformational”. She said Ryan is a lawmaker who “knows the territory, who knows the issues; that’s helpful”.
There was discussion about divvying up responsibilities, but also about redefining the role of the speaker.
The Freedom Caucus did not officially endorse him because Ryan didn’t command the four-fifths support from its members that the group requires for an endorsement. Ryan, on the other hand, wants to make it harder procedurally to oust the speaker. “He’s willing to put his own self on the line”. Caucus members said that while that endorsement still technically stands, their support for Ryan supersedes it.
“He has a supermajority of the Freedom Caucus, which means that he clearly has more than enough votes from the conference, if other people vote in kind, to get elected by a pretty healthy margin”, said Salmon. After McCarthy withdrew, Ryan had sent a release less than 20 minutes later, reading, “I will not be a candidate”.
Changing the rules to vacate the chair?
Rep. Ryan also sensibly dropped a demand that he would accept the speakership only if he were promised that there would be no possibility of a future revolt seeking to unseat him. The Freedom Caucus did not go along and the matter remains unresolved. “We’re not for that”.
“I won’t be the third log on the bonfire”, he said.
Resolution of the leadership issue is key to moving forward with a vote on raising the government’s debt ceiling in the next few weeks.
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In a statement released on Thursday, Gutierrez acknowledged he had worked with Ryan on immigration and knows the Wisconsin congressman supports “sensible, bipartisan reform”. Instead, they agreed to operate on faith-no easy leap for a conservative conference filled with lawyers who prefer promises in writing, or for a speaker-to-be whose legacy will depend on being able to unify the Republican conference.
