Can McCarthy get through the debt deal and keep his job?

Far-right lawmakers who have resisted raising the country’s borrowing limit for years have not minced words about how they thought Speaker Kevin McCarthy fared during negotiations with President Biden to avert federal bankruptcy.

“Nobody could have done worse,” said North Carolina Representative Dan Bishop, who said he was fed up with what he said were Mr. McCarthy’s “lies” about the deal he would get.

Representative Bob Good of Virginia openly marveled at how “our own leadership” conceded to the Democrats on the key tenets of the debt limit bill passed by Republicans last month. Representative Chip Roy of Texas claimed the deal “torn the conference apart” and promised Republican leaders would get a “reckoning.”

But despite all the anger over the deal — by far the biggest test of McCarthy’s leadership since he became speaker in January — few far-right Republicans have taken seriously the idea of ​​putting him over it.

A movement to impeach Mr. McCarthy as speaker could still bubble up, especially if he is forced to rely on Democrats to win a procedural vote to get the debt reduction deal grounded or to rely more on Democratic votes than leaning on Republicans for the unit of measurement. So far, however, there has been little interest in such a move, even among the most conservative legislators in his conference.

Mr McCarthy negotiated the compromise with that threat in mind, trying to strike a careful balance: he could – and probably would – lose the Conservatives’ vote, but he couldn’t afford to make a deal that would harm the far right. so enraged that they go to drive him out. When asked by reporters on Tuesday if he was concerned about the far-right flank of his conference trying to remove him, Mr. McCarthy: “No.”

Under rules passed by House Republicans at the beginning of the year that helped make Mr. McCarthy speaker, any legislator could call for a quick vote to remove him from that role, something a majority of the House would receive.

A far right Republican so far – Mr. Bishop – has said publicly that he considered the debt and expenses agreement grounds for Mr. McCarthy out of office.

Colorado Republican Representative Ken Buck said on NBC’s “Meet the Press Now” that he had discussed the matter with Freedom Caucus chairperson, Pennsylvania Republican Representative Scott Perry. “Let’s go through this battle and decide if we want another battle,” Mr. Buck said in response.

And in what has become a hallmark of his leadership style, Mr. McCarthy collected the support from an influential conservative whose opposition to the deal could have doomed the bill: Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, an influential libertarian who sits on the powerful Rules Committee.