saying, and then he dropped the bomb saying that he was not going to run. he was dropping out of the race. he explained to reporters shortly after. >> we had our conference. and there's calls into the district. i don't want making voting for speaker a tough one. i don't want to go to the floor and win with 220 votes. i think the best thing for our party right now is that you have 247 votes on the floor. if we're going to be strong, we got to be 100% united. and i think, you know what, let's put the conference first. >> so to break down what he's talking about there in english is in order to become speaker of the house, the full house has to approve it. and you need a majority voting yes. right now it would be 218. what he was saying pretty clearly is that he might have gotten the votes to do that, but he probably would have been limping along in his speakership