Kevin McCarthy Withdraws His Name To Be Speaker Of U.S. House

By Kim Glovas

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A local political science professor says Congressman Kevin McCarthy's rejection of the House Speaker seat is coming at a really bad time for the Republican party.

Robin Kolodny, Temple University political science professor, says 40 conservative house members were putting heat on McCarthy to defund Planned Parenthood and raise the debt ceiling, and threatened to withhold their votes if he didn't.

Now, she says, the party is scrambling.

"That leaves them with looking for someone else that the right and, I guess, the center right, can agree on. And that's very likely to be someone that we're not even thinking of. To look at that kind of person you're going to look at things like chairs of standing committees, maybe other junior people in leadership."

She says something similar happened in 1998-99, when Newt Gingrich announced he would step down as Speaker and Robert Livingston was the heir apparent. Then, it was revealed that Livingston had hushed up an affair, and the Speakership went to Dennis Hastert, who was relatively unknown at the time.