McCarthy Takes Himself Out

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Hmmm...I guess there's no requirement that the Speaker be a member of the House....

The Constitution does not require that the Speaker be an elected House Representative, though every Speaker so far has been an elected Member of Congress. The Speaker is second in the United States presidential line of succession, after the Vice President and ahead of the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speake...epresentatives

Who knew? The House sure is a loose cannon.

[donquixote99]

I think it's kind of wild that #3 in the line of presidential succession can be appointed by the majority in the House, without necessarily having ever been elected to anything.

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

I think it's kind of wild that #3 in the line of presidential succession can be appointed by the majority in the House, without necessarily having ever been elected to anything.

Damn! Time to fix that.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

I think it's kind of wild that #3 in the line of presidential succession can be appointed by the majority in the House, without necessarily having ever been elected to anything.

"Wild" doesn't do justice to a provision that would allow for the succession to the presidency of a "democratic republic" a person who was never elected to any office by any number of people. It's completely insane.

Of course, the whole idea of having the Speaker 3rd in line is pretty nuts too. The average size of a Congressional district is roughly 711,000 people. The percentage of the population which is of voting age is about 76% so each Congressional district contains around 540,000 eligible voters. That means that, in a close election, the Speaker of the House could have been elected to the House by something like 270,000 votes, or about .09% of the population. How does that person deserve the presidency?

[donquixote99]

The Speaker of the House has a long but interrupted history in the line of succession. He was placed there by the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, but behind the Senate President Pro-Tem. Congress took both offices out of the line in 1886. Truman got both back in, Speaker first, in the 1947 Presidential Succession Act. That Act was extended and elaborated, and made into the 25th Amendment, in 1967.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/...ession_Act.htm

[icenine]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

I think it's kind of wild that #3 in the line of presidential succession can be appointed by the majority in the House, without necessarily having ever been elected to anything.

Obama was going to do that at first, but changed to the born in Hawaii strategy for exactly the reason you mentioned.

[Rajoo]

Can this be true, why they dumped McCarthy and now picked Ryan?

The affair allegations that derailed Kevin McCarthy's quest for the speakership, explained

On October 7, GOP Rep. Walter Jones sent a cryptic letter to fellow Republicans calling on any members of Congress guilty of "misdeeds" to step aside and making reference to former Rep. Bob Livingston, who back in 1999 was forced to abandon the House GOP leadership in the wake of the revelation of an affair.

Then, just before 8 am on the morning of October 8, Steve Baer, an influential conservative donor and activist known for his ties to the right wing of the party, sent an email to McCarthy, Ellmers, and others threatening to expose the alleged affair.
Hours later, McCarthy unexpectedly withdrew from the race, the leadership elections were canceled, and the caucus was thrown into chaos.

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/9/9488323...ellmers-affair

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by BeamOn

Can this be true, why they dumped McCarthy and now picked Ryan?

The affair allegations that derailed Kevin McCarthy's quest for the speakership, explained

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/9/9488323...ellmers-affair

That's the story floating around the rightwing blogosphere that I've seen.
So far, Paul Ryan wants nothing to do with the Speakership.
That Ayn Rand weasel wants to be president one day, as if that'll ever happen.

[bobabode]

"Kevin McCarthy has decided he does not want the thankless task of babysitting a bunch of grown men who have less good sense than a gang of 13-year-old boys left alone in a liquor store. So he shocked his Republican colleagues and the entire political world on Thursday by turning down the chance to be speaker of the House mere minutes before he was to be nominated for the job." LATimes
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topof...008-story.html

[Tom Joad]

This puts Boehner in the drivers seat.

He can now tell the freedom caucus to pound sand.

What are they gonna do?

Fire him?