By Madison Kwiecinski

The House of Representatives is currently engaged in an unprecedented search for a new Speaker of the House who can actually receive congressional approval for the position. Within both parties it seems there is a lack of consensus on what to do now, and even McCarthy supporters are deeply divided on what the next course of action to take is.

McCarthy lost his position as Speaker of the House when he turned to the democrats instead of his own party for help to prevent the government defaulting on its debt and going into a shut down. However, a group from the right-flank in McCarthy’s party wished to see the government shut down and were so angered by the course of action McCarthy took to prevent it that they called for a vote for his removal. A sitting speaker had never previously been removed in history from the position, let alone by their own party.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy has had one universal stance throughout all of this, he wants to keep the government open and moving. He accomplished this by preventing the shutdown, but now the house remains at a standstill until a new speaker can get enough votes to be instated.

McCarthy stated Tuesday that he is willing to support any candidate the Republican GOP can agree to put forward, but urged his supporters within the Republican party not to nominate him again for the position. Despite stating he would not run again from the day he stepped down, rumors he could one again win the nomination ignited this week prompting McCarthy to have to once again reiterate his lack of desire to be reinstated.

The current front runners for the Speakership seem to be House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, but McCarthy has declined several times to comment on who he endorses between the pair.

When discussing the candidate forum, McCarthy said, “ I know a lot of them want to nominate me. I told them, ‘Please do not nominate me, there are two people running in there. I’m not one of them.”

On Oct. 10 the House GOP held a candidate forum in order to hear from the only two currently declared Speakership candidates. Jordan, of Ohio, and Scalise, of Louisiana, spoke at the forum Tuesday evening in hopes of garnering support for the speakership vote which will ideally occur by the end of the week.

On Tuesday, Scalise expressed confidence that the Republicans would begin a vote as early as Wednesday, arguing that they “need to get Congress back to work.”

While McCarthy has stated that he agrees they will likely elect a new Speaker this week, he also stated, “It’s more than electing a speaker. If this conference continues to allow 4 percent of the conference to partner with Democrats when 96 percent of the conference wants something else, they will never lead.”

Currently, Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina is serving as interim speaker until the position can be filled. The recent terrorist attacks in Israel over the weekend had put added pressure on the House GOP to quickly elect a new Speaker, but it is still up in the air who will be able to garner the necessary 217 votes to secure the Speakership.