“If I can truly be a unifying figure, then I will gladly serve”, Ryan said after a meeting of the House Republican conference.
Advertisement
“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”, the caucus said in a statement.
For numerous House’s most conservative members, who have chafed under Boehner’s leadership, the demands, combined with Ryan’s obvious reluctance for the job, made them wonder if he hoped they would reject him.
The question will be whether he can win over the three dozen or so members of the Freedom Caucus, who drove Speaker John Boehner to announce his resignation by threatening a floor vote on his speakership, and scared Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy into abruptly withdrawing from the race to replace him.
Calling Ryan a “man who asked to be made king”, the conservative radio personality said he felt betrayed by the hardline conservative group and accused it of selling out.
“I don’t think that is going to change”, he said, noting that Thomas Jefferson himself supported the current rule.
One of Ryan’s own demands, though, has not been widely accepted by the caucus – a demand that would make it more hard for conservatives to use procedural votes to ouster the House speaker.
Ryan “is smart enough to know what he needs to do and it sounds to me like he is trying to make sure if he does make the move to be speaker, he does it so he can get things done”, said California Democrat Reps.
In a statement, the 55-member, center-right group said they look forward to working with Ryan, who they called “a thoughtful leader and reformer in Washington, a unifier in the House Republican caucus, and someone who is willing and able to work across the aisle to achieve results for the American people”.
“He went from, “I don’t want it and I won’t take it” to ‘I don’t want it but I might take it under certain terms and conditions, ‘” says Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, a Freedom Caucus member.
And while Labrador said he intends to vote for Ryan, he warned that his negotiations with the Freedom Caucus aren’t over.
Paul Ryan is on the verge of becoming the next Speaker of the House after a super-majority of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus agreed to vote for him, while stopping short of a formal endorsement. Its endorsement came as no surprise. But Representative Mike Simpson, a Boehner ally, said of Ryan: “He’s the closest to having it in the bag”. Webster has virtually no chance of winning, but said Wednesday that he was still a candidate. But she noted that as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan produced fiscal plans that reshaped Medicare with voucher-like payments, warning, “So seniors should be watching the Ryan priorities carefully”.
Prior to the meeting Wednesday, Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice-presidential nominee, had laid out a series of conditions that would need to be met before he would agree to seek the job. Even before that, Congress must raise the nation’s borrowing limit in two weeks’ time, or face an unprecedented default. If they don’t, Ryan has said he’s happy to remain Ways and Means chairman.
Advertisement
Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Mary Clare Jalonick and Deb Riechmann contributed.
