Updated: 6:35 p.m. | While many lawmakers have said they don’t think Speaker John A. Boehner will stay for another term, the surprise defeat of Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the recent leadership elections now has at least one conservative lawmaker thinking Boehner’s position has been strengthened.  

Raúl R. Labrador has repeatedly predicted that Boehner would step down as speaker at the end of this term. In fact, the Idaho Republican did it as recently as last Tuesday, on the morning of the day that Cantor lost his primary to Dave Brat.  

But after waging his own unsuccessful bid for majority leader, and after Kevin McCarthy was elected to the position, Labrador thinks Boehner is now better positioned to stick around. “I think this actually strengthened him,” Labrador said in his office on Friday afternoon.  

“Whatever his plans were, he has now to decide whether he wants to give a new speaker and a new majority leader the opportunity to actually lead,” Labrador said. “And I think he’s such an institutionalist that he might be thinking, ‘You know, now that we have so much change at the leadership, I may need to stay two more years.'”