It's Official: Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan Is the New Speaker of the House

Read: Kevin McCarthy Just Announced He Won't Take Over As Speaker of the House

Representative Paul Ryan was elected the 54th Speaker of the House on Thursday, He took the reins from John Boehner, who resigned after years of conflict with the conservative wing of his Republican party, leading to him calling the position "the loneliest place in the world."

It speaks to the difficulties of being the Speaker that Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who was Mitt Romney's vice presidential candidate in 2012, initially didn't want to take it on. When asked if he'd be open to the job back in 2014, Ryan said he wasn't interested. According to the New York Times, it was only after a small group of conservatives blocked majority leader Kevin McCarthy's path to the speakership that the 45-year-old Wisconsin congressman had a change of heart.

Boehner, who has a weird habit of crying in Congressional chambers, delivered his farewell speech Thursday morning. "I leave with no regrets, no burdens," he said, clutching a box of Kleenex. "If anything, I leave the way I started: just a regular guy, humbled by the chance to do a big job."

Ryan said that, as speaker, he's hoping to bring the Republican Party together after years of disagreements over whether compromise is a valid tactic that have split the party.

"We're going to move forward," Ryan said Wednesday. "We're going to unify."