MAJORITY OF THE MAJORITY---McCarthy committed to passing only bills that have the support of most Republicans.

He got President Biden to negotiate. And then he got a deal. Now, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is in the final phase of his debt ceiling saga: whipping up enough support for the bill in the House GOP conference to secure his political future.

Basic political wisdom dictates that McCarthy needs a majority of House Republicans to support the bill in order to maintain his political power, and McCarthy has repeatedly said that he will meet that standard. He knows he’ll need Democratic help to pass the measure, but the more GOP members that vote with him, the better for the Speaker.

“If a majority of Republicans are against a piece of legislation and you use Democrats to pass it, that would immediately be a black letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy to allow his ascent to the Speakership, and it would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said on Newsmax on Tuesday, referring to a move to oust McCarthy from the Speakership.

As of Tuesday evening, more than two dozen members of the slim, four-seat GOP majority in the House said they will vote against the bill, meaning McCarthy will need to rely on Democratic members supporting the Biden-blessed deal to pass the bill.

If more Democrats than Republicans vote for the bill, McCarthy could be in hot water.

“I am predicting it’ll have more Democrat votes than Republican votes,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said Tuesday. “Democrats are truly being told to suppress their enthusiasm, to not talk about it publicly.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that Republicans committed to deliver at least two-thirds of their conference — around 150 GOP members — in favor of the bill. He said Democrats would provide the vote needed to pass the bill, but vowed to hold McCarthy to that number.

McCarthy did not answer a question Tuesday on whether he could deliver 150 GOP votes for the bill, but said that he expects the bill to pass.

Some members are already starting to threaten McCarthy’s grasp on the Speaker’s gavel, officially ending the honeymoon that lasted for months after the four-day, 15-ballot saga to elect McCarthy as Speaker in January.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) became the first GOP member to publicly call for ousting McCarthy by making a motion to vacate the chair over the debt deal Tuesday. While it takes just one member to force a vote on ousting the Speaker — a threshold McCarthy agreed to lower from five during his drawn-out Speaker election in January — Bishop did not explicitly commit to making that motion.

And Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) confirmed an NBC News report that in a House Freedom Caucus call Monday night, he asked whether they were considering calling a motion to vacate due to spending levels in the debt bill being higher than fiscal 2022 levels.

“[Rep.] Scott Perry [R-Pa.], the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told me it’s premature,” Buck said on MSNBC on Tuesday.

Republican leaders called members back to Washington for votes and a conference meeting Tuesday evening, allowing leadership to whip support for the bill in person.

“We’re kicking way beyond our weight. We barely control half of a third of the government,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said in a House GOP press call Monday evening.

In a two-and-half hour House GOP conference meeting stretching into Tuesday night, opponents of the bill aired grievances, while leaders and their allies argued in favor of the bill. Members left the meeting saying their minds had not been changed.

But the meeting also aimed to lessen any retaliation against leadership by those angry with the bill.

“It’s a foregone conclusion it’s gonna pass. They’re gonna have Democrat support to pass it,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). “And so, we just talked about the after-effects. I don’t think McCarthy wants another uprising like this.”