Whatever happened to the resurgent Republican Party? Where is Medicare-killer genius Congressman Paul "Private" Ryan hiding these days?

In town halls across the country, Republicans were hammered by voters angry with Ryan's plan to gut Medicare.

For instance, New York City’s sole (but aptly named) Republican Congressman Michael Grimm, who represents Staten Island and the small slice of Brooklyn where I live, met with a cascade of boos at a Brooklyn junior high school on April 27.

The New York Times reported the event was “a freewheeling and rowdy meeting that often felt more like a wrestling than local politics.” Grimm implored the jeering crowd to “Get it all out, get it all out. It’s good to get it out. Get it out of your system.”

Mikey, it was nice knowing you.

The GOP today threw in the towel. Congressman David Camp, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, put a nail in the coffin of Ryan’s “voucher system.” The Michigan Republican said legislation from the ex-wunderkind from Wisconsin isn’t even going to get a hearing this year.

Camp dropped another bombshell: repeal of “Obamacare” is dead. Facing the reality of a Democratic Senate and White House, he stripped Tea Partiers and the hardcore right their signature fantasy issue of overturning the healthcare law.

These are cruel times indeed for the GOP, a party that severely overreached via the crackdown on middle class public employees in Wisconsin/Ohio and Ryan’s recommendation of healthcare coupons for grandma and grandpa.

And then President Obama took care of the birther wing of the GOP. His dramatic birth certificate presentation and subsequent seizing of the spotlight by Donald Trump hastened the GOP downfall.

Last Saturday, the president joyfully played his own trump card by thumping The Donald at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Donald was not amused.

That Trump takedown proved to be small potatoes compared to the bold attack on Osama bin Laden’s lair, forever junking Obama’s image as cold, aloof and professorial.

Gallup reports today that Obama’s approval rating jumped six points to 52 percent since the killing of Osama. Though it took two years, America can now boast that it has a bold leader in the White House. He is one who can easily swat away the sad state of Republican Presidential wannabes.

Do you really expect to see a President Santorum, Trump, Pawlenty, Gingrich, Palin, Romney, Johnson, Cain, Huckabee, Cain or Paul? C’mon!

(Image: Mother Jones)