McCarthy became Majority Whip on January 3, 2011. And since January 4th of that year he's been planning and working on becoming the Majority Leader. The Tea Party caucus is just complaining because they got caught flat-footed and hadn't even begun contemplating what they would do should a leadership position come open. Let that be a lesson to them. If they some how manage to get one of their members into the Whip's spot then they had better begin working on getting him into the next office up the ladder.
The only conclusion I can draw is that they had no intention of challenging Boehenr as Speaker, again. I wonder how many of them are real conservatives and how many are just playing the numbers game so they can vote with conservatives when they have to, but know the RINOs will still be in charge.