Paul Ryan poised to become House speaker after winning internal GOP vote

Reporting from Washington —  Rep. Paul D. Ryan stepped closer to becoming the new House speaker Wednesday, winning an internal Republican nominating election for the job he never wanted but is now eager to embrace.

The 45-year-old former GOP vice presidential nominee won the majority threshold by loosely uniting the party’s often-warring wings of conservatives and more mainstream lawmakers.

A final floor vote is set for Thursday, almost ensuring the Wisconsin congressman will replace retiring Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who called it quits rather than continue clashing with hard-right lawmakers.

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Behind closed doors, signs of GOP unrest remain. Ryan won 200 votes, well over a majority of the House GOP, but less than the 218 he will need in the upcoming floor vote.

Still, even those who voted against him believe he will prevail Thursday.

Ryan’s ascent comes as the House is set to vote later Wednesday on a two-year budget deal with the White House, one of Boehner’s final legislative accomplishments.

Boehner wanted to “clean up the barn” for Ryan, believing the $80-billion deal would help end the budget standoffs that stymied much of his own tenure.

The accord reverses steep cuts to defense and domestic programs and staves off hits to Medicare and Social Security disability benefits. It also pushes off the debt ceiling showdown, raising the borrowing limit through March 2017, well after the presidential election.

Ryan, though, said the closed-door deal-making process “stinks.”

The last-minute budget accord between Boehner and the White House left Ryan forced to choose between conservatives who oppose the deal and a bipartisan array of lawmakers who are expected to approve it.

Early Wednesday, Ryan said, he decided there were “few good options” and he would back the deal.

“It’s time for us to turn the page on the last few years and get to work on a bold agenda we can take to the American people,” Ryan said.

Now Ryan, who would become the youngest speaker to take the gavel since 1869, is poised to begin his leadership career at odds with the same far-right faction that forced Boehner out.

A small but influential group of about 40 conservative Republican lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus split over Ryan’s leadership, with some backing another candidate for speaker, Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.).

The Freedom Caucus remained united, however, against the budget deal. It “continues the sad pattern of the past five years: a fiscal monstrosity gets negotiated in secret,” the group said.

Ryan appears to have escaped much of the group’s wrath. He remains popular as the party’s fiscal guru and architect of the steep budget cuts and Medicare overhaul in the GOP budget.

“This is Boehner’s baby,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), a Freedom Caucus member, said of the budget deal.

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