Amid debate over the identity of the next U.S. House speaker, John Fund of National Review Online lists some candidates whose names are starting to get some consideration.

Two names keep cropping up in conversations with GOP members: Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois.

Blackburn is currently the vice chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and a frequent spokesman for the party on TV. A former businesswoman, Blackburn was an anti-tax tea-party-type candidate before there was a Tea Party. She led the fight against creating a state income tax in the Tennessee state senate in 2002 and swept into Congress in 2004 after winning that fight. While staunchly conservative, she maintains good relations with moderate members; and if elected, she would become the first woman to hold the top leadership job in either the House or Senate.

Roskam is a veteran of Illinois’s rough-and-tumble politics. A former aide to the late Representative Henry Hyde, who was a pro-life champion in Congress, Roskam served in the Illinois Senate with Barack Obama for four years and frequently tangled with him. “I understand how he operates, and I can negotiate with him,” he tells me. Roskam was elected to Congress in 2006, has the goal of joining the leadership, and has already served as chief deputy House whip. He has taken a leading role in pursuing scandals in the Internal Revenue Service and has worked on measures to make health care more affordable. …

… The job of House speaker is a political position that requires the balancing of various factions within the majority party. If [Paul] Ryan became speaker, he would begin with a wealth of goodwill, but, ultimately, his strengths are in reforming the nation’s dangerously bankrupt entitlement programs. [Daniel] Webster, the favorite of the House Freedom Caucus, was speaker of the Florida house nearly 20 years ago and since then has consistently been a weak political fundraiser — and fundraising is one of the speaker’s key chores.

The more time that elapses from Kevin McCarthy’s bombshell departure from the speaker’s race, the more it looks as if GOP members are coming to realize that no savior or simple solution will heal their internal divisions. That’s why more and more of them are starting to look at members such as Blackburn and Roskam, who both want the job and are likely to have the skills to carry it off.