Getty Behind McCarthy's decision to bail 'They’re going to eat you and chew you up.'

The doubts haunted Kevin McCarthy.

Publicly, he projected an air of confidence, the appearance of the man who would be the next speaker of the House. But in private, his allies told him the pursuit for power was changing him and he wasn't himself. Some said that even if he won, he couldn't govern.


"We need somebody to get us 247," McCarthy said in an extensive interview with POLITICO Thursday, referring to the total number of House Republicans. "And I was never going to be able to get 247."

The majority leader's longtime allies — the people he recruited and helped get elected to Congress — told him they were getting hammered back home, and that it would be difficult to back him on the House floor.

Other friends said McCarthy's pursuit of the speaker’s gavel had become a staggering weight on his shoulders and was already starting to change him.

Conservatives — namely members of the House Freedom Caucus — were making demands he believed he simply couldn’t deliver on.

And, of course, there was Benghazi. The California Republican’s monumental blunder – his claim that the panel was created to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign – became an unavoidable distraction.

McCarthy went back and forth in his head, and with his staff. Should he stay in the race? Did he even want to? And with a limited mandate – winning the speakership with probably just 220 votes, essentially the bare minimum – could he be an effective speaker?

"We all worked to get the majority. And I had a lot of friends that were really supportive that said, 'Why do you want to do it during this time? This time will be the worst time. They’re going to eat you and chew you up,'" McCarthy said in the interview. "But I also felt with what we had in front of us, we need somebody to get us [all 247 Republicans united], and I was never going to be able to get 247.”

McCarthy came up with two options. He could drop out of the race. Or he could cobble together 218 GOP votes in the closed meeting Thursday of House Republicans to nominate the speaker — proving he had the support to win a floor vote for speaker.

In the hours leading up to the party nominating contest, McCarthy concluded the job was not for him. Even if he could win, he'd be unable to move a must-pass debt ceiling increase. He figured he'd have an equally hard time shepherding through a critical spending deal.

The party, as he would say after the announcement that left the entire Capitol dumbfounded, needed a new face.

He had missed his moment.

A McCarthy aide delivered the news to a shocked Boehner just moments before he made the announcement publicly.

“For the betterment of the conference, if we are going to have all these battles about wanting to do something, it's easier if we have someone who comes and unites us,” McCarthy said during the interview. “And there’s something to be said about a fresh face.”

With that, McCarthy's unusually rapid ascent through House leadership ranks came to an abrupt halt.

Washington is filled with men and women who never go for the brass ring, only to regret it years later. McCarthy, however, seemed at peace.

“The conference is in an odd place,” McCarthy said, as he scrolled through messages on his BlackBerry. “Sometimes you gotta hit the bottom to be able to come back. This gives us a real fresh start – a new start gives a fresh start. Having a fresh face brings the conference together. There are hurt feelings about past things on all sides, I tried to do some healing there.

"Look, I think it’s just best for the conference," he added. "I don’t want to go through these tough things and still have more problems.”

There was an immediate effort by senior Republicans to try to convince Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to reconsider his resistance to the speakership. He is seen as one of the only House Republicans who has the stature to unite all factions in the conference. Ryan immediately put out a statement saying he, too, wasn’t the guy.

McCarthy will remain majority leader, the No. 2 in the unruly conference, where he will be in charge of the House floor, committees and policy. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who mounted an aggressive bid to replace McCarthy as majority leader, will remain as majority whip.

While it wasn’t the only factor, the House Freedom Caucus’ decision to vote as a bloc was a huge blow to McCarthy’s count and his ego. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who was poised to run for House majority leader, cast doubt on whether McCarthy could win the speakership. Members of the House Freedom Caucus met privately with McCarthy days before the planned vote, and threatened to overthrow him as speaker if he did not accede to their demands.

McCarthy said when the Freedom Caucus endorsed Florida Rep. Daniel Webster “that showed how tough of a hill I had to climb.”

McCarthy said he’s not sure if he will endorse a candidate for speaker, but there’s already talk about a caretaker to hold the speaker’s gavel until the end of 2016.

The leading candidates are Minnesota Rep. John Kline, a close ally of Boehner who chairs the Education and Workforce Committee; Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Michigan Rep. Candice Miller, the chairman of the House Administration Committee; Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee; and Rep. Greg Walden, the current chairman of the NRCC.

