flasher stays hot

This is my daughters car. a few months ago the flashers quit working. I found the flasher (by the ash tray) and noticed that it was hot. She ordered a new one and had it installed, and everything was good. then her battery went dead so she put in a new one, that lasted two days and it was dead. while I was rescuing her I pulled the pos cable and it died, so I rebuilt the alt, pulled the cable and it died again, so I changed the voltage reg and now it runs with the battery disconected, but now the wipers have quit, the battery still goes dead, and the new flasher is so hot you can barely touch it. Where could it get power with the key off? Could a faulty signal switch be killing all the other components? Do I have to pull the steering wheel to check it?
I have worked on my own stuff quite a bit, but I never owned a dodge, so this is all new to me, I can't even figure out how to get the steering wheel off.