Kevin McCarthy ALREADY moves into Speaker’s office and insists ‘we will have a good day tomorrow’

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Tuesday would be a “good day” after his staff moved their office furniture into the speaker’s chambers Monday morning.

Looking somewhat stressed Monday afternoon, the California Republican hurried out of the U.S. Capitol when reporters asked him about the next day’s Housewide vote to elect their chamber leader.

McCarthy’s campaign for the gavel has been a bit bumpy for weeks, but the pressure has mounted in the last 48 hours with as many as 15 GOP members reportedly ready to vote against him. He can only lose four votes to win.

Earlier that day, his staff had been seen taking belongings and carts to the House Speaker’s office at the Capitol.

The move is according to standard protocol CNNbut it means he’ll have to move back if more than four House Republicans rebel against his cause — which is becoming an increasingly likely scenario.

A group of five Republicans leading the “Never Kevin” movement seems to have inspired more to join their cause. One of them, Representative Bob Good, told Fox & Friends on Monday that he expected between 10 and 15 people to vote against McCarthy.

He said the Republican leader is “part of the problem, not the solution.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by nine other House Republicans in a New Year’s Day letter.

McCarthy told colleagues on Sunday he was willing to make certain concessions to gain support that he and moderates in the conference had been wary of for weeks. Most controversial among them is a motion to vacate the seat, which under current proposed rules would allow any five House Republicans to vote for a new chairman.

But the House’s nine current and incoming Republicans signed a letter calling McCarthy’s announcement “almost impossibly late.”

But nonetheless, he told reporters in a video shared by NBC News’ Haley Talbot, “I think we’re going to have a good day tomorrow.”

McCarthy needs 218 votes to win Speaker, meaning he can only afford to lose the support of four Republicans.

And in a bad sign for his campaign, even McCarthy’s supporters are talking about a Plan B again.

Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate, wrote an opinion piece in the Daily caller on Monday, he called McCarthy’s leadership “excellent,” but reaffirmed his willingness to work with Democrats for an alternative should the anti-McCarthy insurgency succeed.

“I have been much criticized for saying I would work with moderate Democrats to elect a more moderate speaker,” Bacon wrote.

“But my actual words were that if the five refuse to unite around what the vast majority of the conference wants, I’m willing to work across the aisle to find a nice Republican.”

In his Fox interview Monday, Good said his voters in Virginia’s 5th congressional district “told me not to support Kevin McCarthy” for Speaker.

He also claimed that while the group of 14 lawmakers who have already publicly said they will not support McCarthy don’t necessarily have an alternative in mind, they simply want to block him from taking over from outgoing Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“If it’s not Kevin, who would you vote for?” Monday was well asked.

“What we’ll do is block Kevin,” he replied. “I suspect 10 to 15 members will vote against him on the first ballot tomorrow — that will vote for Andy Biggs.”

“But then I think on the second ballot you’ll see more and more members vote for a real candidate who can represent the Conservative Conference. Motivate the base,” Good said.

He declined to say who he thought would be the ultimate winner.

The majority of the House of Representatives has failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot only once since the Civil War last time it happened was exactly 100 years ago in 1923.

McCarthy has tried to win some favor with those in the party who oppose him by giving in to a demand that he lower the threshold needed to remove a speaker of the House from his post.

A “motion to leave the seat” has only been used twice in US history. In practice, it is similar to a vote of no confidence where members can petition for the current leader to resign.

The parliamentary procedure was first used in 1910 against Republican Chairman Joseph Cannon and the second time was more than 100 years later, in 2015, against Republican Chairman Mark Meadows — who later served as President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff.

The five original “Never Kevin” lawmakers who rallied against McCarthy are Representatives Good, Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

The nine additional Republicans who pledged to vote against McCarthy in the Sunday letter are Representatives Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Chip Roy of Texas, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Harris of Maryland and Andrew Clyde of Georgia; along with Representatives elected Andy Ogales of Tennessee, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, and Eli Crane of Arizona.

Perry, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, posted the letter to his Twitter calling for change and a leadership shake-up.

“Nothing changes if nothing changes, and that has to start from the top,” Perry wrote. “Time to make the change or get out of the way.”

Good berated McCarthy for letting huge omnibus spending bills pass through the house before going on vacation.

“Nothing indicates he’s going to change his pattern since he’s in charge where he’s part of the swamp cartel,” said the Virginia Republican. “He is the reason on the Republican side why we are passing massive omnibus spending bills that have just been rammed down our throats by the Republicans in the Senate. He was part of that in leadership.”

The reference to the “swamp cartel” comes from Trump, who called Washington, D.C. a “swamp” in his 2016 presidential campaign and said he would go to the nation’s capital to “drain the swamp.”

“There is nothing about Kevin McCarthy that indicates that he will bring the change needed in Washington or needed in Congress, or that he will fight the Biden-Schumer agenda and advance the interests of the voters who sent us to Washington to bring us real change.”

On Sunday, McCarthy held a private conference call with Republicans in an effort to garner support for his vote as speaker on Tuesday, Jan. 3, when the new Congress takes office.

“For someone with a 14-year presence in the senior House Republican leadership, Mr. McCarthy bears the burden of correcting the dysfunction he now explicitly admits during that long tenure,” the nine GOP members wrote in their letter.

They added that his “statement comes almost impossibly late to address the continuing shortcomings leading up to the January 3 opening of the 118th Congress.”

“In this state, it should come as no surprise that expressions of dim hope reflected in far too many of the crucial points still under discussion are insufficient. This is especially true with regard to Mr McCarthy’s candidacy as speaker, as the time calls for a radical departure from the status quo – not a continuation of past and ongoing Republican failures,” he said. the letter.