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| Kevin McCarthy drops out of race to lead US House | Kevin McCarthy drops out of race to lead US House |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Republican Kevin McCarthy has dropped out of the race to be speaker of the US House of Representatives. | |
| He told colleagues at the start of a closed meeting on Thursday that he was not the right person for the job. | He told colleagues at the start of a closed meeting on Thursday that he was not the right person for the job. |
| Just hours before votes were due to be cast, the news has left the race to succeed John Boehner in disarray. The election has now been postponed. | Just hours before votes were due to be cast, the news has left the race to succeed John Boehner in disarray. The election has now been postponed. |
| Mr McCarthy was considered the favourite to take over from Mr Boehner, who quit amid party tensions. | Mr McCarthy was considered the favourite to take over from Mr Boehner, who quit amid party tensions. |
| The speaker is the third in line to the presidency and is in charge of the lower chamber of Congress. | |
| "If we are going to unite and be strong, we need a new face to do that," said Mr McCarthy on Thursday following his announcement. | "If we are going to unite and be strong, we need a new face to do that," said Mr McCarthy on Thursday following his announcement. |
| "I feel good about the decision." | "I feel good about the decision." |
| He said he wants the Republican Party to be "100%" united in backing a new speaker of the House. | |
| Analysis: Anthony Zurcher, North America Reporter, BBC News Washington | |
| The hard-right wing of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives - the "Freedom Caucus", as its members calls themselves - has flexed its muscle once again. | |
| First it put House Speaker John Boehner in a position where he opted to resign rather than face a challenge to his leadership. Now it has apparently blocked Mr Boehner's second-in-command, California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, from ascending to the top job. | |
| It seems clear that Mr McCarthy just didn't have the votes to become speaker - either within the Republican House caucus or when the House, as a whole, was to weigh in later this month. | |
| In the end, perhaps, Mr McCarthy was just too closely tied to the current, unpopular Republican establishment in the run-up to Thursday's scheduled leadership election. His comments about the House's Benghazi hearings and its goal of thwarting Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations - only served to further undermine his speaker bid. | |
| At this point the process of picking a replacement for Mr Boehner has been thrown into total chaos. The speaker of the House is third in line for the US presidency, but it's a post that's proving difficult for the Republican Party to fill. | |
| Mr McCarthy is not dropping out of Congress and will stay on as House majority leader, he said. | |
| "We fought hard to win this majority and turn this country around," he said. "I don't want to make voting for speaker a tough one." | |
| Some members of Congress have called upon House Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan to run, but he confirmed in a statement he does not plan to. |