October 08, 2015 10:35 AM UTC

BREAKING: McCarthy Withdraws, House GOP In Chaos

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #3: Wall Street is equally baffled by the Republican leadership vacuum black hole. From Politico:

“We will not mince words — this is the political equivalent of a dumpster fire,” said Chris Krueger of Guggenheim Securities. “We are increasing our odds from 30 percent to 40 percent for some kind of accident that would keep Congress from raising the debt ceiling in time due to brinkmanship, procrastination or political gridlock.”

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UPDATE #2: Colorado’s Rep. Ken Buck has possibly never been more right:

“You have probably 240 members walking around right now trying to figure out what’s going on” – @RepKenBuck on leadership fight. #copolitics

— Mark K Matthews (@mkmatthews) October 8, 2015

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UPDATE: The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, tough to argue with him:

The tendency in the after-action reporting on McCarthy’s stunning collapse — and, make no mistake, it is stunning — will be to pinpoint a single reason for it: whether that reason be rumors of personal problems, an inability to win over the more conservative members of his conference or his recent flub when talking about the Benghazi select committee. But, those single-issue theories all miss the broader point here: There is a revolution happening within the Republican party right now. The establishment’s hold on power is more tenuous than it has been at any time in recent memory. There is no one currently in office that can claim with any credibility that he or she speaks “for” the party as a whole. That’s a remarkable development since, for decades, the GOP was known as the party that, eventually, got in line. As in, Republicans tended to nominate the guy for president who was perceived as the runner up the last time around. And, they might grumble but they eventually acceded to the wishes of Congressional leaders like Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert. The Democrats were always the rebellious party; the GOP was the follow-the-rules party.

—– We’ll be talking about this for a few news cycles, via the AP:

GOP lawmaker: Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy withdraws his candidacy for speaker. — The Associated Press (@AP) October 8, 2015

Stand by for local updates. And look out below!