WASHINGTON -- House Republicans return to Washington this week to confront a leadership crisis and looming budget deadlines.
Attention is focused on Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, who is under pressure from party leaders to run for House speaker -- a job he repeatedly has made clear he does not want.
Even if Ryan yields to his colleagues' pleas, conservatives are increasingly serving notice that the House Ways and Means Committee chairman will have to audition for the job just like anyone else, despite the widespread support he has.
That suggests that the same hard-liners who pushed current Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to announce his resignation and scared off his heir apparent, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., could put up obstacles to Ryan, too.
It also leaves any resolution unclear for a party that seems nearly irreparably divided. More than a half-dozen lawmakers are considering running for speaker if Ryan does not, even as hard-liners warn that Boehner risks more rebellions if he stays on past his planned departure date of Oct. 29.
"John is a lame duck. There was a reason John announced his resignation," said Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, a leader of the House Freedom Caucus. "I think Paul does have the credibility across the conference to be able to unite us, but to say he's the only one I think is hyperbole."
"It's not just the conservatives Paul would have to convince," Mulvaney added. "Everybody's interested in a new type of leadership."
The turmoil comes as Congress confronts the need to raise the federal borrowing limit by early November or risk a market-shattering default, and talks are underway to come up with a budget deal to avoid a government shutdown in two months. The task of raising the debt limit is falling to Boehner. But he will have to tread carefully, given GOP objections to an increase without concessions from President Barack Obama -- something the White House is ruling out.
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of the Republican hard-liners, said he would consider forcing a vote to push Boehner out of the speaker's chair if Boehner engages in "nefarious activity." Massie defined that as "running the tables" on legislation not supported by a majority of Republicans. Boehner has suggested he wants to "clean the barn" before leaving Congress so his successor does not have a lot of unfinished business.
But Massie said he doesn't draw a "red line" at the debt limit.
The unrest in Congress coincides with a chaotic GOP presidential primary dominated by candidates far afield from the political establishment, as Republican voters push for action, change and confrontation with Obama.
It may be difficult for any House speaker to satisfy those demands, with Obama still in the White House and minority Democrats in the Senate using that chamber's rules to bottle-up legislation passed by the majority-rule House.
The job of speaker "would more or less fall in the category of thankless task, because people are not going to be in agreement with anything that a speaker does," said Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, one of the lawmakers who said she is being encouraged to consider the job.
Already Ryan is under attack from some conservatives inside and outside Congress for his support of comprehensive immigration legislation.
Rep. Steve King of Iowa, Congress' leading immigration hard-liner, said Ryan would be unlikely to win support from House conservatives opposed to any "pro-amnesty" politician.
"Other than one candidate dropping out, nothing has changed in the race for speaker. The best candidate, Daniel Webster [of Florida], is gaining momentum for his demonstrated leadership," King wrote to House Republicans, urging them to support Webster as a speaker candidate.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the panel investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks said Sunday that new information reveals a "total disconnect" between the security needs of U.S. personnel on the ground and the political priorities of Hillary Rodham Clinton's State Department staff in Washington.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., described emails from Ambassador Chris Stevens to the State Department requesting more security almost from the moment he arrived in Libya. The request virtually crossed paths with one Clinton's staff sent to Stevens, asking the new ambassador to read and respond to an email from a Clinton confidant, according to Gowdy. At another point, Clinton aide Victoria Nuland asked Stevens for advice on "public messaging" on the increasingly dangerous situation in the region, Gowdy said.
"He didn't need help with [public relations], and he was asking for more security," Gowdy said on CBS' Face the Nation. Gowdy refused to release the emails on Sunday. But he said they point to "the total disconnect between what was happening in Libya with the escalation in violence -- that we were a soft target, that there was an increase in anti-Western sentiment ... while Washington is asking him to read and react to a Sidney Blumenthal email and help on how to message the violence."
Gowdy described the emails as he defends his 17-month probe into the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that left Stevens and three other Americans dead and anticipates Clinton's long-awaited public testimony on Thursday. The event is a make-or-break moment for the investigation that even some Republicans said was designed to undermine Clinton's second bid for president.
"I have told my own Republican colleagues and friends, shut up talking about things that you don't know anything about," Gowdy said Sunday on CBS.
Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner and Laurie Kellman of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/19/2015