What is going on with today's GOP?

We have the mess in Wisconsin, including Gov. Walker’s Vanna White veto power .

We have a NH senator being quoted ” You know the mentally ill, the retarded, people with physical disabilities and drug addictions – the defective people society would be better off without….I wish we had a Siberia so we could ship them all off to freeze to death and die and clean up the population. ”

We have a party that is supposedly in favor of smaller, less intrusive government advocating surveillance, striping the Fourth amendment, and regulating bedroom behavior through anti-homosexual laws.

There was a time when the GOP was merely an alternative to the Democratic party who had different ideas on certain things as opposed to a cult of insanity.

So could somebody please fill me in on what changed here? Is there a schism between the traditional Conservatives (like Colin Powell) and the Bat-s**t insane (like the Republicans that are making the news)? Am I just getting too critical in my old age? What is going on here?