What has happened to the Republican Party?

I admit it, there are some things about the modern Republican party (and its increasingly loony Tea Party wing) that still surprise me.

Why for example do conservatives loudly claim to revere the Constitution, yet spend so much time discussing how they'd like to dismantle every aspect of the federal government that is the very expression of the principles embodied in that document?

Another thing that surprises me: instead of targeting the predatory bankers who almost destroyed our economy, why do conservative politicians instead target government programs that actually help people like Medicaid and Social Security?

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Here comes a religious hurricane - the 9/11 Memorial

Michele Bachmann attacks US jobs going overseas to Ireland

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Why do they fight tooth and nail to protect elite billionaires like the Koch brothers from paying a one tenth of one percent increase on their tax rates?

After all US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in American history - so where are all the jobs these 'wealth creators' were supposed to create? I'm serious, where's all this wealth these wealth creators have brought us?

And why has religious fundamentalism taken over the Republican party as obviously as it now has? Perry and Bachman openly admit they do not believe in evolution (making creationism mainstream for the first time) but they do believe in angels and demons, they say. They would have felt right at home in the 15 century. These are two candidates who apparently don't care care what happens to the country or indeed the planet, since God's going to destroy it all anyway. So why are they even being considered?

If elected, which I doubt she will ever be, Bachmann's first act would be to get rid of the Department of Education, she said yesterday. No nation ever needed it less, apparently.

I wonder about this too: why Republicans, having stripped the private-sector of their pensions and health benefits thanks to outsourcing and union busting and shareholder pressure, are now targeting public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits too?

Why should these workers do so? Why particularly when you contrast their hard working lives with the endless gravy train that our richest citizens enjoy without fear of reproach from the party they have bought and paid for?

And why should we give up our own social security? These are benefits for which we worked.

And why does the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell think his greatest legislative priority - instead of jobs for out of work Americans - is ensuring that Obama is a one-term president?

How is that a patriotic action? How did it come to this? If you can answer any of these questions directly I'd like to read it below.