WASHINGTON — After years of being treated as nothing but a nuisance for Republican leaders, a group of conservative House members finally felt vindicated — but still not yet satisfied — when in a closed-door meeting Friday morning, Speaker John Boehner stunned his colleagues by announcing his retirement.
The group known as the House Freedom Caucus had in recent days threatened a government shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood and sent a clear signal to Republican leaders that Boehner's speakership could soon be in jeopardy if their demands were not met.
To avert a shutdown, Boehner, in a meeting with House Republicans Friday morning, laid out a proposal to keep the government open. And then, he took himself out of the equation. The Ohio Republican, who was first elected to Congress in 1990, told his party he would retire at the end of October without giving even his closest colleagues much of a heads up.
Boehner got a long standing ovation from Republicans in the room for his service.
Conservatives and the speaker finally agreed on something, said Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas — a member of the House Freedom Caucus who has been itching to boot Boehner out of his position: "It's time for new leadership."
"I don't know why he did this," Huelskamp said. "But it's clear that if a vote was called, he didn't have the votes to sustain himself as speaker if Nancy Pelosi didn't help him out. That put him in a very vulnerable position."
Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana said he believed it was the "groundswell" of discontent among the Republican base against the speaker that led to his resignation.
"We heard about it constantly throughout August. And it wasn't just the core conservatives out there. It was Republicans across the board," Fleming said.
"Y'all have probably seen the polls — 62% of our base of Republicans feel like they've been abandoned and betrayed, so I think it was the statesman-like thing to do for our speaker to go ahead and accept the fact that there is discontent, and we need to change leadership."
But conservatives aren't entirely satisfied and plan on doubling down on their battle against establishment Republicans.
Boehner's retirement has set up a scramble for the top leadership slots in the House, and they want to make sure their wing is represented among those ranks.
Despite leadership elections over the last few years in which conservatives have said this time they'd win, though, there is not an obvious candidate to run against Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy for the position.
Huelskamp said House conservatives were going to meet soon and figure out which one of them they should rally behind for a leadership position. "When I first came up here in 2010, there was no competition for these slots, there will be competition now hopefully," he said.
Boehner's resignation is just the start, Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona stressed.
"The victory isn't in the change in speaker," Salmon told reporters. "It's in the change in direction. And I hope that we do that."
Much of the talk in the House was less about who will succeed Boehner, and instead on shifting ire onto Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate at large.
"Boehner has been tarnished by McConnell's lack of leadership on numerous occasions," Salmon said. "Look, I think John Boehner has done the right thing putting the interests of the country ahead of his own personal interests. I applaud that. It's being a real standup guy. But a lot of the problems we are engaged in is because the Senate doesn't take any action on anything."
Rep. Bill Flores of Texas added: "The problems that Congress is having are not from the House. The problems are from the Senate...In my view, the speaker fell on the sword for all of Congress. And I hope that the Senate starts to get things done."
Whether Boehner's resignation is really a victory for the Freedom Caucus, however, is something that allies dispute. Some blasted the conservative wing of the House and the power they've been able to wield, following Boehner's resignation.
"You just can't continue to have a super-ultra minority continue to try to dictate what happens in the House of Representatives," Rep. Devin Nunes of California told reporters. "It's a big problem."
In a press conference Friday, Boehner said him stepping down was always his plan. He intended to resign last year, but he decided to stick around longer after then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his seat in a primary last July.
Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, another Boehner ally, rejected the assumption that conservatives had pushed him out.
"Nobody ever made John Boehner buckle in their lives," he said. "I think he always strives to do what he thinks is the right thing, and he thought this was it. I respect that decision."
Looking ahead, Flores admitted he didn't know if much was going to change in the House — and that the new speaker would be in a very different position.
"Because he or she is going to know you got a group of people that's going to take their head off," he said.