But mostly, many conservative House members were anxious that they would be hard-pressed to explain to voters back in their districts that they had supported McCarthy, who was seen as too closely aligned with the current GOP leadership. A movement to draft Paul Ryan has so far fizzled.
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McCarthy (R-Calif.), now the House majority leader, dropped the bombshell announcement at a GOP conference meeting where his party had been expected to approve him despite tea partiers’ dissent as their candidate for the House’s top post. That means the new speaker will wind up exactly where Boehner has been: a squish, a sellout, a Republican In Name Only.
Faced with a conservative revolt and an inability to win over his caucus, McCarthy made a stunning announcement Thursday that he was withdrawing from the race.
POLITICO has stitched together the fascinating background story…
“And I think there had been something said for us to unite, we probably need a fresh face”.
His withdrawal sent Republicans into disarray on Capitol Hill, prompting the party to postpone the nomination of a candidate for Speaker ahead of a scheduled House vote on October 29th.
Boehner said Thursday that he would serve until the House elected a new speaker, but he gave no indication of when that might happen.
The toxicity of the struggle included a letter from Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) warning that no one should run for speaker if they have any skeletons in their closet.
Conservative US Republicans drove frontrunner Kevin McCarthy out of the race to be the next speaker of the House Thursday, plunging their party into disarray and triggering a scramble to find the chamber’s next leader.
McCarthy recently got in trouble for bragging during a Fox News interview that the House committee on Benghazi had hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. I do know, however, that Ryan would be nuts to accept the job unless those two conditions are met. The Treasury department has estimated that the United States will hit its $18 trillion debt cap around November. 5, and the White House urged Congress to raise the limit before then to avoid a possible default.
If none of them can get there, Boehner may be forced to stay on until a new candidate can be found. But Ryan was under intense pressure to reconsider, including from Boehner and McCarthy himself. The divides between the wings of the party, and Obama’s presence in the Oval Office, will make it a struggle for a House speaker to satisfy the Republican Party while at the same time executing the tasks of the job, like getting the debt ceiling raised.
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Ribble said the Ways and Means chairmanship is “what he always wanted”.
