Rep. Kevin McCarthy angrily demands GOP votes for speaker in stormy meeting: ‘I’ve earned this job!’

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) angrily demanded fellow Republicans elect him speaker of the House in a stormy closed-doors meeting as a handful of far right-wing rebels vowed to derail his bid.

“I’ve earned this job,” McCarthy reportedley barked at fellow Republicans Tuesday in an expletive-laced speech. “We earned this majority, and goddammit we are going to win it today.”

McCarthy’s speech was interrupted by firebrand conservative Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) who shouted “bulls–t,” in an outburst that could be heard outside the meeting room, according to reports.

Flanked by fellow MAGA hardliners, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) told reporters that he hadn’t heard anything from McCarthy that would shake his opposition to the longtime establishment leader.

“That meeting didn’t do a lot to give me comfort about the need to change the status quo in the House.” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who refused to say if he would vote for McCarthy.

McCarthy admitted he has failed to line up the majority of votes needed to secure his long-held ambition of leading the House of Representatives on the first ballot.

But McCarthy vowed not to cave to the demands of the rebels whom he branded “a few people thinking only of themselves.”

The entire House will gather in public Tuesday afternoon. It must elect a speaker before carrying out any other business.

If McCarthy does not win a majority on the first ballot, lawmakers will vote again and again until he or someone else is elected, a potentially chaotic process that has not been seen in a century.

The establishment favorite had already offered a plethora of concessions to a group of hardline right-wingers in hopes of winning enough of the 222 GOP lawmakers.

McCarthy can likely afford to lose the support of no more than four Republican lawmakers.

The math is a bit uncertain because the Speaker of the House only needs a majority of those actually voting, meaning he could still win if some fellow lawmakers on either side of the political aisle don’t cast votes.

McCarthy has been Republican House leader since 2019 when the GOP last lost control of the chamber during the 2018 midterm elections under former President Donald Trump.

He was considered a shoo-in for speaker even after Republicans scored only a surprisingly narrow win in the 2022 midterms.

Trump himself has backed McCarthy although it’s not clear whether he has strongly lobbied his backers to end the rebellion.

But several far right-wing members of the Freedom Caucus, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), say McCarthy represents the establishment of both parties that they are determined to uproot at any cost.

They are demanding the right to force no-confidence votes at any time, more power to win votes on proposed amendments and an ironclad commitment for an aggressive series of investigations into various right-wing causes.

Even if McCarthy ends up winning, he will be left severely wounded by the drama. His two Republican predecessors, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) were effectively hounded out of office by similar right-wing revolts.

The divisive show has already cast a pall over what should have been a day of celebration for Republicans who would like to claim some measure of political momentum from winning back the House and ushering in two years of divided Congress for the second half of President Biden’s four-year term in the White House.