Saturday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Cavuto Live,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), who was reportedly a candidate for the House Speaker seat vacated by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), said he was formally stepping aside to allow for a contest between House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
“So let me ask you about — you’ve talked about responding with one voice on this, so that could be paraphrasing here, sir,” host Neil Cavuto said. “But there’s been a good deal to talk about now since Kevin McCarthy’s surprise removal as Speaker that — that you have to unite around someone. Your name has come up as a possible candidate for Speaker, are you?”
“Well, certainly what I’ve done is I said to you before, and I’ve said to others, I was going to spend the time to talk to every single member,” Hern replied. “I’ve talked to over 200 with a lot of thoughts of prayer, especially what we’re seeing right now with Israel. I think it’s time that we do everything we can to unify our party. I know there’s a lot of people that are upset members that are upset. But right now, what we see is — we’ve seen, we need leadership in the world. And that’s going to come from the Republican Party in the Congress so we can get our bills back on the floor.”
“As I mentioned, we put bills forward back in May to prevent things like this from happening there,” he continued. “Nothing’s going to get on the floor. We get a speakership, and because of that, this is bigger than any one individual. My dear friends Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, ironically, both RSC chairs formerly as I am today. We’re big on policy. I’m going to step aside and let them get their best case why they should be Speaker of the House. And we need to get together very quickly so we can get our Congress back open for business, so we can move this great nation forward. And I think that’s the right thing to do right now.”
“So Congressman, you mentioned Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise. They’re the two best-known candidates, presumably only public candidates for Speaker. Do you have a preference?” Cavuto asked.
“Well, certainly, I have a preference that we can get to 217,” Hern responded. “Because we’ve got to do that very quickly. We need to do that in our conference. We need to show strength to the American people. And we’re going to do that in a different way, using a different room. Typically, before it’s been — whoever got the majority and conference would go to the floor to get the full vote. We know, based on what happened earlier this week, that the Democrat Party, and probably rightfully so, is not going to support our candidate. They’re going to support there’s. So we’ve got to come together and listen to each other and know what we need to do to go forward.”
“And that’s going to be something that’s — that I’ve heard time and time again is unity is important,” he added. “I am so happy with so many people, and I didn’t ask for a single vote that asked me to run. But right now is not the time, right. Now is the time to get our conference back united and move forward. It’s been a very disruptive week, not only for Republicans in the Congress but for Americans across the United States. And our country needs to show a unity of strength, and that’s what we need to be doing right now.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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