Nation/World

McCarthy exit puts Congress in chaos

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Kevin McCarthy left his party flummoxed about where to turn next for a leader, and the rest of Washington stunned by the chaos within Congress' ruling party, when he removed himself from the running Thursday for House speaker.

In a closed-door session originally scheduled as a coronation for the 50-year-old Bakersfield Republican, McCarthy told colleagues that he is ``not the one'' to unite the party, despite having more than 200 of the 247-member Republican caucus behind him, the largest GOP majority since 1928.

Even with their stranglehold on the House, Republicans have demonstrated time and again their difficulty knitting the party's uncompromising Tea Party faction, numbering roughly 40 to 50 members, into a governing majority.

That conservative bloc, operating under various groupings, including one called the Freedom Caucus, does not have enough support to elect a leader, but does have enough to keep anyone they oppose from holding the job.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, whom McCarthy played an instrumental role in toppling from the speakership after a 2010 Republican landslide, offered no assistance.

``It's up to House Republicans to choose the next speaker,'' said her spokesman Drew Hammill. Asked by reporters in a hallway scrum if she would accept the speakership, Pelosi said, ``We want to win it.''

Current House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, abruptly postponed Thursday's vote when it became clear that McCarthy was short of the magic 218 majority of the full House that he would need to become speaker and to pass Republican legislation after the election. McCarthy told reporters afterward, ``I don't want to make the vote for speaker a tough vote,'' adding that Republicans need a ``fresh face.''

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The move throws Congress into chaos as critical legislative deadlines loom to raise the ceiling on the national debt, fund the government through next year and keep construction going on roads and airports. One of the few members who could unite the party, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the former vice presidential nominee, reiterated his refusal Thursday to run for the job.

Such is the disarray that outside experts speculated about a possible coalition government with Democrats, or even that someone who is not a member of the House, such as former presidential nominee Mitt Romney, could serve as speaker in a caretaker role. Nothing in the House rules prohibits such a scenario, although it has never happened.

``It's a long shot, but if you don't have anybody who can win the race and you have to move forward, you need someone to take control and you may have to come up with something a little unexpected,'' said Stan Collender, a former top congressional staffer, now executive vice president at the public affairs firm Qorvis MSL Group in Washington.

For the first time in two years, some political analysts are speculating that the chaos on Capitol Hill, combined with the possibility that an outlier GOP presidential candidate such as Donald Trump could win the party nomination, could crack open a window for Democrats to retake the House in next year's election, a prospect that until now had been dismissed until at least 2020, when a new census leads to a redrawing of congressional districts.

``The continuing disarray on their side is a clear liability for them,'' said a senior Democratic aide. ``It looks like they're unfit to govern, and that narrative, along with a strong Democratic presidential nominee, could certainly produce wave-like conditions'' in next year's elections.

Even if Pelosi were interested in a coalition government, common to Europe's parliamentary systems, it would not resolve this problem of a House so divided it can't get anything done, the aide said. Not only are Republican leaders fearful of Tea Party rebellions, so are individual members. Any member from a conservative district who is seen voting with Democrats faces a potential Tea Party primary challenger, often financed by powerful outside conservative organizations such as the Club for Growth. That's what toppled McCarthy's previous boss, former Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, who was in line to be speaker until he lost in a primary upset in 2014.

``This is so messed up only they can fix it,'' the aide said.

Republican analyst Ford O'Connell agreed that the mayhem could damage Republicans next year. ``They have to resolve it,'' O'Connell said, or else ``the majority could come into play in 2016. There's a lot on the line.''

As majority leader and second in command, the genial McCarthy was seen little more than a week ago as a shoo-in for the speaker's job. But he bungled badly last week when he linked a long-running congressional investigation into the deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, to Hillary Rodham Clinton's poll numbers, all but confessing that the motivation for the $4.5 million investigation was pure politics.

McCarthy admitted that the gaffe cost him support, saying, ``I should not be a distraction.''

But Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., who backed McCarthy and as a conservative was ``willing to take arrows'' back home for him, attributed McCarthy's downfall to talk radio. Rooney said McCarthy was widely ridiculed as too willing to compromise conservative principles, a ``Boehner 2.0'' version of Boehner, who announced his resignation as speaker last month after it became clear he could not unite the party to prevent a government shutdown.

``Talk radio was telling people to vote for Webster and Jason,'' Rooney said, referring to party rebels Daniel Webster of Florida and Jason Chaffetz of Utah who challenged McCarthy but showed no indication that they had anywhere near the votes to win. Rooney said constituents were calling his office, angry that he was supporting McCarthy.

``I don't know where we go from here,'' Rooney said.

FreedomWorks, another outside conservative group, hailed McCarthy's withdrawal, claiming that 11,000 messages to members from grassroots activists led to ``a huge win for conservatives who want to see real change in Washington.''

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