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UPDATE: Dan Bishop Denies Report He May Resign If Bid To Stop McCarthy Speakership Fails

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Editor’s note: Bishop has denied reports that he might step down if McCarthy becomes House Speaker. We have updated our story with his new comments.

One of the 20 Republicans refusing to vote for GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy to become the next speaker of the House has suggested he would resign from Congress if the group is unable to unsuccessful in their effort to bring change in the lower chamber.

“After six votes in two days, House Republicans still do not have a consensus candidate for speaker, and 20 GOP holdouts remain opposed to Rep.-elect Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for the job. One of the group, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, went so far as to say he would resign from Congress if they are unsuccessful in their effort to bring about institutional change in the House – which they do not trust McCarthy to deliver,” Fox News reported.

“Such is the opposition the majority of the Republican conference faces as they struggle to find 218 votes for the next House Speaker. McCarthy can only afford to lose four votes in his quest for the speaker’s gavel and not even the urging of former President Donald Trump for Republicans to rally behind him was enough to change minds. Until a speaker is elected, House Republicans cannot conduct business – they are not even sworn in – and their campaign promises to serve as a check and balance on the Biden administration on day one hang in limbo. The last time a speaker vote failed was in 1923,” the outlet added.

“We’re going to either see improvement up here the same way we made remarkable improvements in North Carolina in the state legislature, or I’m out,” Bishop told Roll Call, adding that McCarthy has repeated the same things for years in Congress.

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Later on Thursday, Bishop claimed his comments were taken out of context and not true.

He said it was not a threat to resign if McCarthy ultimately wins the speakership: “I will serve my term with all the force and vigor in me.”

As someone who is “older than the average bear” and “not going to stay up here for decades,” Bishop told Roll Call he has no qualms about adopting a “never Kevin” position in the ongoing leadership fight.

Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the drama after the sixth speakership vote failed on Wednesday night.

After the House voted to adjourn for the day, Pelosi called out Republicans for their “cavalier attitude” in electing a new Speaker, tweeting “all who serve in the House share a responsibility to bring dignity to this body.”

“Sadly, Republicans’ cavalier attitude in electing a Speaker is frivolous, disrespectful, and unworthy of this institution,” she wrote.

A group of Republican military veterans also publicly called on their colleagues to elect McCarthy.

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“The people standing behind me have regularly, consistently, over decades proven that they’re willing to put something greater than themselves above themselves,” Rep.-elect Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisc., said at the briefing, noting that the group collectively has 291 years of military service between them.

“A minority of our party has decided that they want to continue with this obstructionism and it’s actually becoming detrimental to our nation,” Van Orden added. “I will not stand for that.”

Even billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk jumped into the drama and tweeted that McCarthy should be elected as speaker.

“Kevin McCarthy should be Speaker,” Musk tweeted early Thursday morning.

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Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw went off on the group of House Republicans who have opposed nominating McCarthy.

While speaking to reporters late on Wednesday, Crenshaw slammed the 20 Republicans, saying, “I’m tired of your stupid platitudes that some consultant told you to say on the campaign trail, alright. Behind closed doors tell us what you actually want, or shut the f**** up. They need to be men and adults and say what they want, instead of playing these little games, that’s what we’re asking.”

“That’s what I’ve asked them. Some of them are my friends. Stop saying platitudes like, ‘Washington is broken. We can’t do the status quo.,’ They want to pull the pins on the grenades and lock the doors. I think the 20 holdouts are continuing to show themselves to be unbelievably unserious. Now they’re just choosing random people. They don’t have a plan. It’s almost like they want to make the point that they don’t have a plan. They have zero ability to articulate what they want that would cause them to vote yes. It is utterly confusing, and then they get mad at us for criticizing, it’s actually quite hilarious the self-victimization that occurs.”

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