WASHINGTON – The sudden decision Thursday by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to withdraw from the speaker’s race thrust congressional Republicans into chaos and left the contest wide open, with a crowd of lesser-known players jockeying for power and rank-and-file members fretting that the political unrest on the hard right that drove McCarthy and House Speaker John Boehner away from the position has left the party unmanageable in the lower chamber.
Conservatives seized the moment as McCarthy made his exodus, celebrating the departure of one of the GOP’s moderates and fastest-rising stars – and pledging to push for one of their own, a hard-liner on fiscal and social issues, to step forward in the coming weeks before the leadership elections are rescheduled. McCarthy’s associates, many hailing from mainstream Republican districts, urged caution and began efforts to draft another centrist Republican to succeed Boehner.
Boehner personally asked House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to run for speaker, according to two sources familiar with the exchanges. Boehner has told Ryan that he is the only person who can unite the House GOP at a time of turmoil.
“It is total confusion – a banana republic,” said Rep. Peter King, a Boehner ally, as he recounted seeing a handful of House Republicans weeping Thursday over the downfall of McCarthy and the broader discord. “Any plan, anything you anticipate, who knows what’ll happen. People are crying. They don’t have any idea how this will unfold at all.”
The scene at the Capitol yielded more questions than answers by the hour Thursday, with an array of influential figures such as Ryan still reluctant to take McCarthy’s place as the consensus candidate of the party’s establishment and those averse to firebrands. As they mulled and were courted, a parade of hopefuls with low profiles beyond Capitol Hill – such as Rep. Daniel Webster, a former state House speaker, and Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz – made the case in huddles and in the hallways that they are ready to be a fresh face for an unsettled House.
McCarthy, too, called for a “new face” during a news conference, asking for unity behind a leadership slate that is not as closely aligned with Boehner and the old bulls who have retained a grip over the House GOP in recent years even as a younger generation of Republicans has ascended.
Boehner, who last month said he would resign the speakership after weeks of facing a near-certain revolt from conservatives, said he will “serve as speaker until the House votes to elect a new speaker.”
The bench for the House GOP is sparse, emptied in recent years by the same forces that have vexed Boehner and McCarthy. Virginia’s Eric Cantor, then the majority leader and firmly in line to succeed Boehner, was defeated in a 2014 House primary by a conservative challenger, elevating McCarthy but gutting the leadership of the political capital that Cantor had accumulated.
