House Leadership Megathread: it's House of Cards but without the monologues

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Whoah, Paul Ryan also supports Price.

Price is pretty right of center, no?

Price is very right of center, but so is Scalise, and Price doesn't have the baggage that Scalise has.

And being from Oklahoma and knowing the congressionial field, I'm very surprised that Tom Cole, a Boehner ally and a guy obviously rising through the ranks, isn't going for spot #3 and Markwayne Mullin (who, for all intents and purposes, is a backbencher even compared to Cruzite Jim Bridenstine from my district) is running for it.

I feel like Cole really, really screwed something up in leadership a while back, but I can't remember what. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Freedom Caucus to endorse Webster.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/house-freedom-caucus-endorses-rep-webster-for-speaker-214527

It's like they want to be irrelevant.

The rules of the House Freedom Caucus require 80% of their members to agree on it before the organization itself makes an endorsement. There are 42 known members of the HFC (it's impossible to know their full member count because they do the whole Fight Club thing). This means at least 34 GOP Congressmen aren't voting for McCarthy. If they maintain their opposition through the actual Speaker election, it would keep McCarthy below 218 votes and prevent his election. There's no reason to believe they wouldn't actually do this, which means they have the leverage to demand major concessions from the Republican leadership. McCarthy must either pay their ransom in order to become Speaker, or call their bluff and risk a major embarrassment to both himself and the party.

This is what it feels like to be on the other side of obstructionism

If they hold the vote and no one gets 218 votes, what happens?

Chaos

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Boehner un-resigning is a PR nightmare. They need to elect somebody else.

King for Speaker!

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Random anecdote (as always with such things, take it with a grain of salt): A friend of mine who is a really right-wing evangelical SoCon (he wanted a Mike Huckabee/Tom Coburn ticket in 2008, a Rick Santorum/Ron Johnson ticket in 2012, and initially wanted a Ben Carson/Pat Toomey this time around until the good doctor jumped aboard the crazy train in that Meet the Press interview), said he is going to write-in for the Presidential race (regardless of the Republican nominee), as well as vote for Strickland and whatever sacrificial lamb gets nominated to run against Tiberi due to precisely what King was talking about: even putting all ideological considerations aside, with this latest mess national Republicans have proven once again proven themselves objectively incapable of governing. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/rep-issa-im-considering-running-for-house-speaker.html

Also, lunch break is about to end, so no time to get a link atm, but apparently the Freedom Caucus won't back Paul Ryan if he runs for Speaker.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

If the Freedom Caucus is refusing to back Ryan, doesn't that negate the whole point of him running in the first place?  If I were a Republican, I would be absolutely furious with these people.

I believe jdb is confused - his link doesn't say the Freedom Caucus is refusing to back Ryan (and indeed they haven't said that at all)

I didn't have time to put up the link about Ryan, will do it tomorrow.