The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
GOP appeals to Ryan to seek speaker’s job
Wis. representative seen as top hope for House speaker.
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has said he does not want the job, but House Republicans are struggling to reunify their conference after the resignation of Speaker John Boehner and a decision by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to drop his bid for speaker,
David M. Herszenhorn WASHINGTON — House Republicans, struggling to regroup and reunify their conference in the face of a leadership crisis, achieved no new clarity Friday about who might step forward to claim the speaker’s gavel as attention remained focused on Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who has said repeatedly he does not want the job.
Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president in 2012 and now chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, is viewed by many House Republicans as perhaps the only person who could bring the conference back together after the resignation of Speaker John Boehner and a stunning decision Thursday by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to drop his bid for speaker.
Both Boehner and McCarthy have been trying to cajole Ryan into running and several lawmakers leaving a conference meeting in the basement of the Capitol said they believed Ryan was softening his position and would return to Wisconsin to discuss the situation with his family and closest advisers.
“He’s the consensus candidate at this point,” said Rep. Darrell Issa of California, whose comment reflected the extent to which many Republicans have refused to accept Ryan’s own insistence that he is not, in fact, a candidate.
“He’s both vetted and he has experience of chairing not one but now two committees,” Issa said, referring to Ryan’s prior role as chairman of the Budget Committee. “And so what you are hearing in there is the preparatory work for a more successful conference once we find a new speaker, but you are also hearing people universally or nearly universally asking Paul Ryan to go home over the weekend and reconsider.”
Ryan made no comment, which in itself some of his colleagues viewed as notable given his previously forceful denials of interest.
The leadership void in the House is playing out as Congress braces for a series of major battles over crucial fiscal issues, including a need to raise the federal debt ceiling by early next month and the need for an agreement on a broad spending plan to avoid a government shutdown by Dec. 11.
Several lawmakers described the mood in the meeting as positive, almost convivial, even as House Republicans grappled with their most serious leadership crisis since 1998, when Rep. Bob Livingston, who had been chosen to replace House Speaker Newt Gingrich, suddenly withdrew amid revelations about an extramarital affair.
In the meeting Friday morning, Boehner, who had been hounded for nearly his entire time as speaker by the most conservative flank of his conference, reassured rankand-file lawmakers that he would remain until a new speaker was chosen. That suggested he could stay as speaker and in Congress, beyond his previously announced retirement date at the end of October, though Boehner said he believed a new speaker could be chosen before then.
The lawmakers who had pushed for Boehner’s ouster have made a long list of demands for changes in how the House operates, including major adjustments to the composition of a committee that decides other committee chairmanships, and also changes in the way legislation and amendments can be brought to the floor.
Those demands, as well as others regarding various leadership posts, apparently contributed to McCarthy’s decision to withdraw, even though he had been the heavy favorite to succeed Boehner. The Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 conservative lawmakers, had announced its support in the speaker’s race for Rep. Daniel Webster, a little-known lawmaker from Florida.
Their bloc of votes es- sentially made it certain that McCarthy would be short of the 218 votes needed on the floor of the House for his election later in the month, and that he would have had to spend several weeks trying to meet the group’s demands to win its backing.
Members of the Freedom Caucus said they would continue to support Webster for the time being, though several said they would be happy to meet with Ryan and consider his candidacy.
The gulf between mainstream Republicans and the conservatives who demanded Boehner’s resignation is now so great that one veteran Republican even raised the possibility of teaming up with Democrats to elect a new speaker — an idea that would normally be unthinkable in modern U.S. politics.
“In order to pass any bill around this place, everybody knows we need to assemble a bipartisan coalition,” said Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, pointing to a stopgap spending measure that was adopted last week with more Democratic votes than Republican ones.
“Same thing will happen on the debt ceiling, budget agreement, omnibus, there will be a bipartisan coalition,” Dent continued. “I suspect at some point if we can’t get 218 Republicans to vote for a speaker candidate, we will have to assemble a bipartisan coalition to elect a speaker.”