GOP CIvil War Over the Ryan Budget

I swear, nothing is more fun these days than watching the loons of the GOP tear each other apart as they try to destroy the nation's safety net for the elderly and unfortunate and jockey for supposed political advantage. The big question is whether Democrats will use the GOP free for all to their advantage or seize defeat from the jaws of victory yet again. The GOP civil war, if you will, was ignited by thrice married, serial adulterer and presidential wanna be Newt Gingrich who as CNN and other outlets are reporting:

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[O]n Sunday TV, fresh from his presidential announcement, he [Gingrich] declared the House GOP plan for Medicare "right-wing social engineering." Then he went on to explain how he still supports individual mandates in health care -- despite the fact that the mandates are the key to the Republican attacks on the president's health care law.

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The CNN article goes on to state:
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Rep. Paul Ryan, the author of the GOP budget roadmap, likes to call his budget realistic and honest as it takes on Medicare spending. But it's more about theology than realism because of what it omits: tax hikes. So don't tell people you are going to change Medicare unless you're taking on everything. That's the lesson, only it's one the GOP refuses to utter. Even Gingrich, who threw Ryan overboard, would never say that.
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Gingrich in short order tried to back track from his GOP heresy but seems to have only made matters worse for himself. Even as Gingrich tries to disingenuously duck and weave, he is being pummeled from all sides. David Frum - one of the vanishing breed of rational, thinking conservatives - on his blog calls it like it is: Gingrich spoke the truth. A truth that the GOP needs to hear if it ever will pull its head out of the bubble of the Tea Party and the crazy extremists of the Christian Taliban. That truth? That the Ryan budget and its goal of killing of Medicare is going to turn radioactive with voters as they figure out more of its real world implications. Here's what Frum has to say:
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[T]he trigger for today’s [Wall Street] Journal attack was not Gingrich’s divisive or racially provocative statements. The trigger was actually a wise statement: a caution against committing the GOP to a huge rework of Medicare into a means-tested program that left more and more American seniors to pay more and more of their health insurance costs out of their own pockets. * The Ryan plan has become party orthodoxy, true. On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer proclaimed it a political capital offense to express public doubts about the plan. * But as Gingrich learned the hard way: the American public will not accept this kind of reform and will smash any politician who tries to force it upon them. There are ways to reduce the fiscal burden of Medicare, but telling seniors to buy their own damn healthcare is not going to be one of them. I wish it were somebody other than the Kenyan-anticolonialism-sharia law candidate making that argument, but it’s an important argument from any source.
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I have more than a few reservations about giving Obama a second term, but when one sees the utter insanity and lack of any sense of being tethered to reality that now is a prerequisite for popularity with the BOP base and the Tea Party crowd, one can only think that the GOP is out for self-immolation in 2012 unless an adult can take charge of the asylum.