After Paul Ryan was elected as Speaker of the House Thursday morning, officials responded.
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The 65 House speaker in the nation’s history was a reluctant candidate for speaker. At age 45, Ryan is the youngest speaker since 1869.
Asking for members to pray for him, and for one another, Ryan recalled feeling like Harry Truman must have, becoming president after the death of Franklin Roosevelt.
“We have nothing to fear from honest differences honestly stated”, he added.
“I am not interested in laying blame”. We’re not settling scores. “We are wiping the slate clean”. I come at this job as a two-time committee chair.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was seen as Boehner’s likely successor but dropped out of the race when it appeared he would not get the 218 votes needed on the House floor.
“You know, there haven’t been a lot of people that have gone on from speaker to the White House, so I’d hate to lose him as a potential contender down the road for the White House”, Romney told CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month.
Ryan went on: “Open up the process”. Let people participate. And they might change their tune. A respected minority work in good faith.
Following are comments from Arkansas members of the U.S. House delegation.
Boehner, who hails from Ohio, resigned under pressure from rebellious conservatives in the party, revealing a deep rift between those lawmakers and the more establishment Republicans in the House.
“This begins a new day in the House of Representatives”, Ryan said.
By the end, it became clear that Ryan had secured more than enough votes to win the election, a contrast with the narrow vote in January, when 25 Republicans voted against Boehner.
In an address that lasted just under 10 minutes, Boehner said he felt satisfied with his almost five years as the House speaker.
“We’re wasting a lot of money and money we don’t have and we’re not far in the country from a failure, a bankruptcy”, Paul Robbins said. “And I want wish him and his family all the best”.
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Ryan will now have the chance to be the face of Republicans in Congress, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell; only 24 percent of Americans approve of Republicans in Congress, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll. The party doesn’t control the House Republican caucus because most of the members only have to answer to their donors.
