I don’t usually expect to laugh until my sides hurt when I read a Bloomberg Businessweek article but Joshua Green’s peek behind the conspiracy to unseat John Boehner as Speaker of the House is simply hilarious. It’s also bloodcurdling when you consider these jokers are in positions of power.

Green lays it all out for us to gaze at in wonder:

First step: Finding an alternative. As my editors would happily tell them, it’s a lousy job. Eric Cantor didn’t want it. Paul Ryan didn’t want it. But they decided not to let this detail slow them down. Next step: Plotting. This one didn’t go too well either. On Wednesday night, an amused Republican staffer called me to report that Representatives Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Raul Labrador, and Steve Southerland were gathered at >Bullfeathers, a Capitol Hill bar, openly plotting their coup. Not exactly the Roman Senate scheming to dispatch Caesar.

Final step: Pulling it off. Here’s where things went truly, hilariously awry. Any good coup depends on stealth. But on Thursday, an enterprising Politico photographer snapped Representative Tim Huelskamp sitting in open session reading from his iPad—not making this up—the entire roster of the plot against Boehner. Just so there was no mistaking that he was up to no good, the document was entitled “YOU WOULD BE FIRED IF THIS GOES OUT.” Not making that up either.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Tea Party Republicans.

We actually pay these people to make policy? Can we get a refund? Please?!

It goes downhill from here, if that’s even possible (it is!) and you simply have to read the rest of it if you’re not laughing too hard to maneuver your mouse.

The horrifying part is that these are the people that conservatives sent to DC. Never mind that they’re totally ignorant of how government works (a prerequisite for the “keep your hands off my Medicare!” crowd) but they’re not terribly bright in everyday life either.

Future historians will have nothing nice to say about the opening decades of the 21st century but they’ll be sure to get a good laugh out of it.

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