When the Tea Party got going, a lot of people thought this was it. The normal people of America were going to first wrestle the GOP away from the donor class and then use it to wrestle the country back from the lunatics. I recall seeing a guy walking around my office building wearing a little tea bag lapel pin. He was typical. An older and less vibrant fellow, properly aware of his  own backpack of privilege, but rightly concerned with all the vibrancy going on around him, or whatever.

Those were heady days and all for naught. The bipartisan fusion party has carried the day.

Tea Party Republicans contemplating a bid to oust Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) shouldn’t count on Democrats to help them unseat the Speaker.

And without their support, there is no chance to topple Boehner in this Congress.

A number of right-wing Republicans, long wary of Boehner’s commitment to GOP efforts attacking President Obama’s policy priorities, have openly considered a coup in an attempt to transfer the gavel into more conservative hands.

But Democrats from across an ideological spectrum say they’d rather see Boehner remain atop the House than replace him with a more conservative Speaker who would almost certainly be less willing to reach across the aisle in search of compromise. Replacing him with a Tea Party Speaker, they say, would only bring the legislative process — already limping along — to a screeching halt.

I love that line, “Democrats from across an ideological spectrum.” Yeah, all those pro-life, families values Democrats are making a difference.

“I’d probably vote for Boehner [because] who the hell is going to replace him? [Ted] Yoho?” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said Wednesday, referencing the Florida Tea Party Republican who’s fought Boehner on a host of bipartisan compromise bills.

“In terms of the institution, I would rather have John Boehner as the Speaker than some of these characters who came here thinking that they’re going to change the world,” Pascrell added.

Liberal Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) agreed that, for Democrats, replacing Boehner could lead to a worse situation.

“Then we would get Scalise or somebody? Geez, come on,” said Grijalva, who referenced House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.). “We can be suicidal but not stupid.”

Boehner, who has grappled with dissent from the Tea Party wing since he took the Speaker’s gavel in 2011, has seen opposition to his reign grow this year, even as he commands the largest GOP majority since the Hoover administration.

That’s led to talk of a new coup, something that is more difficult to pull off after the election of a Speaker on each Congress’s first day of business.

Any lawmaker can file a motion to “vacate” a sitting Speaker, a move that would force a vote of the full House. The effort would almost certainly fail, as the conservatives would need the overwhelming support of Democrats to win a majority. But it would be an embarrassing setback to Boehner and his leadership team, who entered the year hoping their commanding new majority would alleviate some of the whipping problems that had plagued them in the past.

The new push back against Boehner began in the earliest stages of the new Congress when 25 conservatives voted in January to strip him of the Speaker’s gavel.

Boehner’s troubles have only mounted since then, as conservatives have thwarted a number of his early legislative priorities, including a border security bill, an anti-abortion measure and a proposal to limit the federal government’s role in public education — all considered by GOP leaders to be easy-pass bills that would highlight their new power in Obama’s final two years in the White House.

More recently, Boehner’s decision this week to pass a “clean” bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has exacerbated conservatives’ concerns about his leadership.

As proof of the discontent, 167 Republicans bucked their leadership by opposing the DHS package. Their votes protested Boehner’s move to strip out provisions undoing Obama’s executive actions shielding millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. from deportation.

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) called Boehner’s capitulation “a sad day for America.”

“If we aren’t going to fight now, when are we going to fight?” he said Tuesday just before the vote.

Every Democrat joined 75 Republicans in passing the bill.

In the midst of that debate, a number of Tea Party Republicans warned that they’d consider an attempt to topple Boehner if he caved to Obama’s demand for a clean DHS bill.

“If it happened, conservatives would be outraged,” said one such conservative who voted against Boehner in January. The lawmaker predicted that the coup attempt might not come immediately but warned the Speaker, “It’s a long year.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus and a critic of Boehner’s legislative moves, said recently that no coup is in the works.

“That’s not the point,” Jordan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “The point is to do what we told the voters we were going to do and do it in a way that’s consistent with the United States Constitution.”

Citing Jordan’s comments, top Democrats have punted on the question of whether they would support a coup. Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip, acknowledged that there are “some disgruntled people who are talking about it,” but predicted that no such effort will materialize.

“If Jordan’s not talking about — he’s the head of the Freedom Caucus — it’s not going to happen,” Hoyer said this week.

The casual way in which the Democrats discuss GOP party politics is the big story here. It never goes the other way. The Liberal Democrats are a black box. No one knows what’s going on in their deep state. But, the GOP is an open book because they are essentially the straight man in this show. They are the Washington Generals to the Democrats Harlem Globetrotters. Theirs is a is a supporting role.

We’ve seen this across Europe. The countries in deep trouble has seen their main parties just about fuse into one. In Britain, the Tories are in government with the Liberal Democrats, allegedly their ideological opposite. The result is every election gets the same result. In America, giving the GOP control of Congress has changed nothing. Voters can be forgiven if they might conclude it was all a big scam.