GOP House leadership race intensifies with Chaffetz mentioned, McCarthy counting every vote

If you want to know how well a member of the congressional leadership is fairing, check their fingernails. Inspect the cuticles. Peer at the epidermis. Any hangnails? Are they in need of a manicure?
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss, knows a lot about the rigors of serving in congressional leadership.
And political palmistry.
“I kept noticing, I kept getting these ridges on my fingernails,” said Lott during a visit to the Capitol this week.
Lott sought out a doctor.
“I said, ‘What is this?’ He said, ‘Well, that’s stress,’ ” said Lott, recalling the conversation.
We already knew that candidates seeking a promotion in the House Republican leadership ranks were battling tooth and nail after Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced his resignation.  Perhaps with an emphasis on the nail. This brings a whole new spin to the term “nail biter.”
Lott was a member of the House or Senate leadership for about 17 of the 34 years he served in Congress. He served as House minority whip, Senate majority whip, Senate majority leader, Senate minority leader, Senate majority leader (again) before concluding his tour as Senate minority whip.
And Lott lived the perils of leadership. There’s the pressure. The second-guessing. The infighting. Every word scrutinized and parsed. It’s a lot like the current firestorm embroiling House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican and the frontrunner to succeed Boehner.
McCarthy suggested on the Fox News Channel that House Republicans empaneled the chamber’s Select Committee on Benghazi strictly to quash the presidential aspirations of Democrat Hillary Clinton. And that sent the House into a tizzy.
McCarthy’s line was an offhanded comment like the one that swatted Lott from his majority leader perch in December 2002.
It was the 100th birthday party in the Dirksen Senate Office Building for the late-Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C.  Thurmond sought the presidency in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket that championed state’s rights and segregation.
“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him,” Lott opined at the Thurmond soiree. “We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either,”
Lott’s apparent backing of Thurmond’s once-segregationist politics torpedoed him from the majority leader’s suite by Christmas.
“It’s windy when you are in the leadership in the House and Senate,” Lott said.
He says when you serve in leadership, someone is always coming for you. Always putting you on the spot. He recounted efforts of political foes who checked into the fidelity of his marriage and his personal finances.
“What did they finally get me with? My own words,” Lott exclaimed.
Lott’s run in leadership in both the House and Senate is remarkable because of its longevity. But you can’t avoid the controversy.
“In the leadership, you take on barnacles like a ship at sea and they start to weight you down after battle,” he said. “Once you get in the leadership, there ain’t no such thing as purity.”
This is why there is discord in the Republican ranks over McCarthy. The House Republican Conference will vote behind closed doors on Thursday to tap a speaker-designate.
But it’s the full House that elects the speaker. House rules dictate that the successful candidate command not just the most votes -- but an absolute majority of those casting ballots.
Upon Boehner’s resignation, the House will have 434 seats. That means the magic number -- if everyone votes for a candidate by name -- is 218. With 246 Republicans in the House by that point, the next GOP Speaker can only lose 28 votes.
Boehner lost 25 Republicans in the January speaker vote. Think those who voted for someone besides Boehner aren’t more revved up now than they were over the winter?
“Nobody has 218 today for speaker,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Kansas Republican and often an antagonistic voice when it comes to the GOP leadership. In January, Huelskamp cast his speaker ballot for Rep. Dan Webster, a Florida Republican who is running again.
Huelskamp says Republicans are watching McCarthy closely after the Benghazi declaration.
“Those comments were not helpful,” he said. “I don’t think that got him one vote.”
Another GOP source who asked not to be identified said some Republicans are looking for an “excuse” to vote against McCarthy. And they may have found it.
“Kevin is dealing with some very thin margins on the floor” in the speakership vote, said Rep. David Jolly , R-Fla., adding the Benghazi comment “took its toll.”
“It would be helpful, given the way (McCarthy’s Benghazi remarks were) interpreted if the majority leader clarified his remarks,” said Rep. Scott Rigell, R-Va., who also voted for Webster in January.
McCarthy tried to do just that Thursday night during an appearance on Fox’s “Special Report with Bret Baier.”
“I did not intend to imply in any way that the work (of the Benghazi Committee) was political,” McCarthy said.
Congressional observers generally panned McCarthy’s appearance, saying it failed to clean up the mess. One GOP source suggested that McCarthy had failed one of his first tests as a speaker candidate. When asked if he had the necessary 218 votes, McCarthy replied “We’re very close, yes.”
A failure to secure 218 votes on the first ballot for speaker would be a blow to McCarthy  -- even if he’s ultimately successful.
A second or third ballot for speaker immediately diminishes his political prowess. It exposes vulnerabilities and reflects the volatility of House Republicans. No vote for speaker has gone to a second ballot since 1923. And if McCarthy does emerge the victor, it might not be for long.
“If he’s lucky, he gets a two-week honeymoon,” said one senior Republican.
“I give him six months,” augured one lawmaker.
On Wednesday, the House voted to avoid a government shutdown. Only 91 Republicans voted yes. Democrats, as is customary these days in the House, carried the way with 186 yeas. McCarthy voted aye. Webster voted nay. Some conservatives viewed that roll call tally as a possible litmus test for speaker.
Oh. And House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, voted nay.
Chaffetz is now tinkering with running for speaker, potentially disrupting the entire race. Earlier in the week, he called for McCarthy to apologize for what he said about Benghazi. He also advocated Benghazi committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., for majority leader.
Chaffetz might not be able to command more votes than McCarthy in the closed-door conference vote or on the floor. But he can discombobulate the entire state of affairs.
To wit: The ballot for speaker in the Republican conclave is secret. But the GOP announces the vote tallies. How can Republicans proceed to a vote for speaker later this month if McCarthy or anyone else receives fewer than 218 backers in the conference meeting?
Moreover, presuming McCarthy commands the most votes for speaker in the conference, how can Republicans immediately vote for a prospective vacancy in the majority leader’s slot when it’s not clear that the current majority leader has the votes to prevail in the speaker vote the floor?
No one has the answers to these questions right now.
There’s a reason why other GOP stalwarts like House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin; Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, Texas;  and even Gowdy aren’t pursuing any leadership position now.
“Where’s the varsity?” asked one House Republican.
Here’s the answer.
“This isn’t a manageable conference right now,” said one House Republican. “We’re too fratricidal.”
In other words, respected lawmakers aren’t pursuing a position in the GOP ranks because the rank-and-file will eat them alive -- perhaps immediately.
On Friday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent a letter to Congress, begging lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling by November 5.
“Without sufficient cash, it would be impossible for the United States of America to meet all of its obligations for the first time in our history,” Lew posited.
An increase in the debt limit is one of the most-toxic votes a member of Congress can take. A failure to do so could call into question the credit-worthiness of the U.S. to say nothing of triggering a global financial shock.
Anyone in leadership -- or pursuing leadership -- is on the hottest of seats right now.
So why would McCarthy put himself through this?
“It was the only chance he has to be speaker, if only for a short period of time,” one lawmaker said.
And what about those passing on a leadership bid now?
“Kevin McCarthy has had this opportunity cast upon him and he knows it will shorten his career,” said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. “It could be seen as an act of humility and leadership character.”
With such a rambunctious group, how could anyone run the House with authority? If the chamber does elect McCarthy, Trent Lott thinks he knows how he would succeed.
“He worked with Bill Thomas, the most-impossible person to work for,” said Lott with a laugh.
Thomas is the former House Ways and Means Committee chairman. McCarthy served as Thomas’s top aide in his California congressional district. McCarthy won Thomas’s congressional seat when his mentor retired. Thomas was smart as a whip and wielded a steady hand on the House’s tax-writing panel. He was also known for sporting one of the most acerbic, caustic temperaments of any lawmaker in the House.
McCarthy’s nature is a polar opposite of Thomas’s. McCarthy is genial. A backslapper. Inviting. Non-confrontational. Funny. Some ask if that’s what the House needs now. Can McCarthy play tough with Tea Party lawmakers? Will he just go-along-to-get-along with Republicans, inviting major standoffs on key issues this fall. Can he spar with Democrats, namely House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“She goes for the kill when she senses weakness,” said one lawmaker. “You can’t show weakness with her.”
So why would anyone want this job, be it McCarthy, Webster or Chaffetz? Why would House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., or Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., want to succeed McCarthy as majority leader?

Obama reacts to Bush's 'stuff happens' comment, sparking bipartisan, presidential debate

President Obama on Friday pushed back against GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s “stuff happens” comment, in the renewed disagreement over gun-control in the aftermath of the fatal Oregon shootings.
Bush on Thursday suggested that more regulations is not always the correct response to a crisis.
"I don't think more government is necessarily the answer to this," he said. "I had this challenge as governor, because, look, stuff happens, there's always a crisis. And the impulse is always to do something. And it's not necessarily the right thing to do."
However, Democrats and others quickly focused on the “stuff happens” part and suggested the former Florida governor was dismissive or perhaps insensitive over the tragedy.
On Thursday, Christopher Harper Mercer, 26, fatally shot nine people in Oregon inside an Umpqua Community College classroom. Mercer, who apparently had emotional problems, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with responding officers.
At a press conference on Friday, Obama was asked about Bush’s comment and responded, “I don't even think I have to react to that one.
“I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments, based on the fact that every couple of months, we have a mass shooting, and in terms of -- and they can decide whether they consider that ‘stuff happening.’ ”
The president also renewed his effort for tighter gun-control and suggested Americans vote against members of Congress who block such legislation and “let them know precisely why you’re voting against them.”
The Senate in 2013 failed to get 60 votes from chamber Democrats and Republicans to pass comprehensive gun-control legislation, after 26 people were fatally shot a year earlier inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newton, Conn.
The issue could well become a key point in the 2016 general election race, with Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton also making a case for tighter gun control in the aftermath of the Oregon shootings.
“I feel an absolute urgency for this country to start being sensible about keeping guns away from people who should not have them,” she said. “I'm going to be pushing this issue. … I would like us to be absolutely determined, as I am, to try to do something about this.”
Fellow GOP presidential candidates this week appeared to support Bush’s position.
Frontrunner Donald Trump told Fox News: “The truth is that this stuff is going to happen … whether we like it or not. People are going to slip through the cracks. They're mentally ill. There's a huge mental illness problem, and it's very sad. When you look at it, it's very sad.”
On Saturday, Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, said that if elected his administration would focus on the early-warning signs exhibited by gunmen in mass-shootings to try to prevent future tragedies.
“Taking guns away does not solve this problem,” Carson, whom most polls show is second place behind Trump, told Fox News. "The Ben Carson administration would be making decisions based on ideology."

Witnesses say Oregon gunman handed something to student to give to authorities

The 26-year-old gunman who killed fellow students at an Oregon community college spared a student and gave the “lucky one” something to deliver to authorities, according to the mother of a student who witnessed the rampage.
Parents of students in the classroom said the gunman shot one after saying she could save her life by begging. Others were killed after being told to crawl across the floor. Shooter Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer later killed himself as officers arrived to the school, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said Saturday.
Though authorities haven’t disclosed whether they have a package or envelope from Harper-Mercy, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press a manifesto of several pages had been recovered.
Bonnie Schaan, the mother of 16-year-old Cheyanne Fitzgerald, said she was told by her daughter that the gunman gave an envelope to someone and told him to go to the corner of the classroom. Harper-Mercer allegedly said the person “Was going to be the lucky one,” Schaan told reporters outside a hospital where her daughter’s kidney was removed after she was shot.
Schaan isn’t the only parent or relative to have said that the killer gave someone a package to another student to hold on to.
Pastor Randy Scroggins, whose 18-year-old daughter Lacey escaped without physical injuries, said she told him that the gunman called to a student, saying: “Don’t worry, you’re the one who is going to survive.”
Janet Willis said her granddaughter Anastasia Boylan was wounded in the attack and pretended to be dead as Harper-Mercer kept unloading, killing eight students and a teacher.
Willis said she visited her 18-year-old granddaughter in a hospital in Eugene, where the sobbing Boylan told her: "'Grandma, he killed my teacher!'"
Boylan also said the shooter told one student in the writing class to stand in a corner, handed him a package and told him to deliver it to authorities, Willis said.
The law enforcement official who disclosed the existence of the manifesto to the Associated Press, didn’t disclose its contents but described it as an effort to leave a message for law enforcement. The official is familiar with the investigation but was not authorized to disclose information and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The official said the document was left at the scene of the shooting but wouldn't specify how authorities obtained it.
Authorities said in a press conference Saturday that Harper-Mercer committed suicide after an exchange of gunfire with officers in Thursday’s shooting.
Hanlin said officers responded immediately to a report of shots being fired on the campus. He said two Roseburg police department officers arrived within five minutes and were joined by an Oregon state trooper.
He said two minutes later the officers told the dispatcher they had engaged the shooter.
The sheriff said two minutes after that “the dispatcher reports the shooter is down.”
The officers exchanged gunfire with the shooter who was “neutralized at that time,” Hanlin said without mentioning the gunman by name. He has said to mention the gunman by name would only give him the notoriety he was seeking.
As the press conference was unfolding, Mercer’s family issued a brief statement, saying “we are shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific events.”
“Our thoughts, our hearts and our prayers go out to all of the families of those who died and were injured,” their statement said.
Hanlin also revealed Saturday that officers searching Mercer’s apartment found another gun.
The recovered weapon brought to 14 the total number of guns Mercer had left behind after the shooting. Six of those guns were in Mercer's possession at the college, along with a flak jacket and five magazines of ammunition. The other weapons were found in his apartment.
Hanlin said an FBI behavioral analyst team was on the scene “to help us understand the why of this event.”
Mercer moved with his divorced mother to Oregon from California two years ago. He was booted from the Army after one month. On social media he expressed a fascination with the Irish Republican Army and frustration with traditional organized religion. He also tracked other mass shootings.

Gun Control Cartoon

Education Secretary Arne Duncan resigning

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is leaving his post in December, Fox News confirmed Friday. 
Duncan has spent seven years in the Obama administration. President Obama has named Education Department official John King Jr. as acting secretary through the end of his term. 
In an email to his staff, Duncan said he's returning to Chicago to live with his family. He said he isn't sure what he will do next, but that he hopes his future will "continue to involve the work of expanding opportunity for children."
Sidestepping a nomination fight in Congress, Obama has tapped John King Jr., a senior official at the Education Department, to run the department in an acting capacity for the remainder of his administration. Obama doesn't intend to nominate King or another candidate for education secretary before his presidency ends in early 2017, said a White House official, who wasn't authorized to comment by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The unconventional approach will spare Obama a fight over a nominee in the Senate but is likely to draw resistance from Republicans in the Senate, which holds the power to confirm or reject nominees for Cabinet-level posts.
"John comes to this role with a record of exceptional accomplishment as a lifelong educator -- a teacher, a school leader, and a leader of school systems," Duncan said in an email to department officials obtained by The Associated Press.
Duncan is one of just a few remaining members of Obama's original cabinet. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Office of Management and Budget director Shaun Donovan have also served in the Cabinet since the first term. Donovan, however, first served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Duncan came to Washington from Chicago, where he ran the city's public school system. As part of the Chicago cohort that followed Obama to Washington, Duncan is one of few Cabinet members who has a personal relationship with the president. A basketball player at Harvard University who played professionally in Australia, Duncan was once a regular in Obama's weekend basketball games.
As secretary, Duncan prioritized K-12 education and made his first signature initiative the Race to the Top program, in which states competed for federal grants. The program became a flashpoint in the fight over federal involvement in education. Critics argued it encouraged states to adopt the Common Core, a controversial set of curriculum guidelines that become symbolic of federal overreach.
Duncan showed little patience for criticism of the program and the standards. In 2014, he cast critics as "white suburban moms who -- all of a sudden -- their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were, and that's pretty scary." Duncan later said he regretted the "clumsy phrasing."
In his senior Education Department role with the peculiar title of delegated deputy secretary, King oversees preschool through high school education and manages the department's operations. He was previously state education commissioner in New York, running the state's public schools and universities.

Trump: Gun laws have ‘nothing to do’ with Oregon shooting

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says Thursday’s shooting at a community college in Oregon can be blamed solely on mental illness.
“The gun laws have nothing to do with this,” Trump told ABC News on Friday, when asked about stricter gun regulations.
“This isn't guns, this is about really mental illness. And I feel very strongly about it,” he added.
The business mogul said difficulties in dealing with people with mental problems are unavoidable.
“Even if you had great education having to deal with mental illness. You educate the community — you're going to have people that slip through the cracks," he said.
Trump told MSNBC earlier Friday that school shootings are a phenomenon isolated to the U.S. “We have millions of sick people all over the world,” he said. “This is sort of unique to our country — the school shootings.”

“You’re always going to have problems,” the businessman added on MSNBC. “That’s the way the world works. For the next million years, people will slip through the cracks.”
Chris Harper Mercer, 26, killed 10 and injured seven in the Thursday shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.

Murderer Chris Harper Merce

Sources: Chaffetz to seek speaker bid against McCarthy

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah is planning to run for House speaker in a surprise longshot challenge to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, according to three Republican aides with knowledge of the situation.
Chaffetz chairs the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has led high-profile hearings on the Secret Service, Planned Parenthood and other issues.
In recent days he's been highly critical of McCarthy over comments the majority leader made suggesting political motives for the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Chaffetz' office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but Chaffetz plans to appear on Fox News Sunday to "announce his decision to run for House speaker," according to that network.
The aides who confirmed his plans demanded anonymity to discuss them ahead of a public announcement. The news was first reported by Politico.
Chaffetz' plans injects new turmoil into the House GOP just a week after Speaker John Boehner shocked Capitol Hill by announcing he would resign rather than face a tea party-backed floor vote on his speakership.
But Chaffetz' entry into the race would come less than a week before the Oct. 8 elections and with McCarthy seen as the commanding favorite, despite Republicans' discomfort over the Californian's boast this week that the Benghazi committee could take credit for Hillary Rodham Clinton's lagging poll numbers. Clinton is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
McCarthy subsequently said he regretted the comment and did not mean to imply the committee is political because it is not. But Democrats pounced and said the remarks revealed the Benghazi committee is a political witch hunt.
In an appearance Friday on conservative host Sean Hannity's radio show, Chaffetz pledged a strong fight for conservative goals.
"Speaker Boehner, bless his heart, has done some good stuff, he got rid of earmarks .. but I'm tired of not actually getting to the end zone, I want to actually change the trajectory, I don't want to say we coulda woulda shoulda I want to score touchdowns."

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey says 'fellow Christians' should arm themselves

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey responded to the mass shooting at an Oregon community college in a Facebook post Friday saying that “fellow Christians” should consider getting a handgun carry permit to protect themselves.
In his Facebook posting, Ramsey, who is also speaker of the Tennessee senate, said the recent spate of mass shootings around the nation is “truly troubling.”
The Blountville Republican said, "whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West."
"I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit," Ramsey wrote. "I have always believed that it is better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it. Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise."
Ramsey provided a link on how to obtain a handgun permit in Tennessee at the end of his posting. The Tennessean reported that Ramsey also posted a link to a New York Post article with the headline “Oregon gunman singled out Christian during rampage.” He also seemed to group other mass shootings with Thursday’s Oregon shooting.
Democratic state Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville said in a statement Ramsey’s comments “reek of fear mongering and religious crusading.”
"There is an eerie absence of logic in his statement that ties one's Christian faith to firearms ownership that is offensive to all religions," Clemmons said. "Senator Ramsey is essentially saying that we should all run out and get a handgun carry permit to prove how serious we are about our Christian faith."
Authorities say Christopher Harper Mercer killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg before he was killed in exchange of gunfire with police. Witnesses said the gunman specifically targeted Christians.
Kortney Moore, 18, told the Roseburg News-Review that she was in a writing class when one shot came through the window. Moore said she saw her teacher get shot in the head. The shooter reportedly told the students to get on the ground before asking people to stand up and state their religion. He then began firing. Moore said she was lying on the ground with people who had been shot.
Janet Willis told the Los Angeles Times that her 18-year-old granddaughter, Ana Boylan, had been shot in the back. Willis said Boyland told her that the gunman asked others in the classroom to rise and state their religion.
"If they said they were Christians, they were shot again," Willis said. "[Boylan and another wounded girl] just laid on the ground and pretended they were dead."