Arnn for Speaker, says Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard

Home News Arnn for Speaker, says Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard
Arnn for Speaker, says Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard

Steve hayes

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For the first time, candidates outside of Congress have been discussed for Speaker of the House, and President Larry Arnn is one of them.

During a Fox News segment two weeks ago, Steve Hayes, Weekly Standard senior writer and Fox News contributor, said Arnn would be a quality choice for the position.

While Republicans continue to shuffle the deck of candidates since Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced his plans last month to resign and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) turned down the bid to replace him in a last-minute decision, no other candidate has garnered widespread support.

As a regular on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Hayes with his fellow panelists discussed the search for a new House Speaker on Oct. 8. During the final commercial break leading into the segment’s conclusion, Baier told the panelists he wanted to ask about their ideas for a speaker candidate from outside Congress. Hayes had 90 seconds to determine his response, and he said Arnn’s was the first name he considered.

“There’s a reason he rose to the top of my head,” Hayes said. “He’s intelligent, serious, and has a background with understanding statesmanship. Having spent hours in the classroom and in lectures he’s given, I know he understands what’s at the heart of the republic.”

Hayes said the television segment during which he offered Arnn as a choice was meant mostly in jest, but the reasons he considers him a good candidate are serious.

“While principles are being laughed at in the media and in politics, we need someone who can provide big-picture perspective,” Hayes said. “And as someone who knows a lot about Churchill, he knows a little about big things and big battles.”

Hayes’ proposal has induced other media outlets to discuss Arnn’s merits, but Arnn takes the suggestion lightly.

“I am more likely to become Speaker of the House of Representatives than I am to become manager of the moon,” Arnn said in an email, “but not much more likely.”

Aside from having a close friendship with Arnn, Hayes has other ties to Hillsdale that led him to immediately consider its leader in the speaker discussion. Hayes’s family lineage includes two presidents of Hillsdale College.  Also, his great-grandfather was Harold Stock, former owner of Stock’s Mill in downtown Hillsdale.

These familial connections meant Hayes spent a lot of time in the city of Hillsdale before understanding the mission of the nearby college.

Looking ahead to the continuing debate over who will assume the House’s speakership, Hayes said the job is a “wide open free-for-all” if Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) chooses not to pursue the position.

While Arnn’s is one of a few names not elected to Congress being light-heartedly tossed around for the speakership, Assistant Professor of Politics John Grant said he believes it’s both a bad idea and unconstitutional to have a House Speaker from outside the elected body.

“Article I Section 2 [of the United States Constitution] says everyone in the House needs to be elected, so the idea of having an unelected manager is a serious problem for the consent of the governed,” Grant said.

Associate Professor of Politics Kevin Portteus added that this marks the first time speakership searches have led to discussing candidates not in Congress.

Regardless of who’s chosen, Hayes said the characteristics that led him to propose Arnn are the same needed for anyone to effectively do the job. In a Congress where “trivial” matters seem to dominate recent debates, Hayes said the job necessitates someone who will lend perspective.

“In a way, the debates are big things, but at the same time, many of the latest battles are just fights over personality,” Hayes said. “We need someone to wrangle this group, and who knows if President Arnn would be successful at that, but what I do know is he brings perspective of where we’ve been and where we’re going, which is what we need almost more than anything else.”

Although Arnn said he’s not considering leaving Hillsdale for Capitol Hill, he agreed that the next speaker will need to solve festering issues within U.S. government.

“Many sense that our institutions are breaking down because they are, including Congress,” Arnn said. “Someone who has been elected to Congress should lead the effort to repair that, and urgently.”