It’s that time of year again fellow Canadians (and especially American taxpayers): where all the eager American presidential candidates board the train and ride to “Crazy Town, USA.” Whoops, I meant the White House.

The candidates have already been eye candy for the entire American voting populace for several months now, but the primaries, “Super Tuesday” and main presidential debates are still around the corner.

Currently, there is only one candidate from the Democratic Party who has chosen to run against president Barack Obama — pro-life activist Randall Terry. But the Republicans are far more entertaining.

The GOP, or the “Grand Old Party” (indeed, a lot of the candidates are old) is filled with candidates stepping over each other to get into the spotlight. They represent the gun-loving, Constitution-protecting, no-gay-marriage-allowing and red-loving side of the political spectrum.

The candidates’ faces plastered everywhere. A few of the most recognized competitors would be Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and a bunch of others whose names I can’t remember.

Mitt Romney is particularly popular with the voters and may actually have a chance to secure the Republican nomination. In a recent CNN poll, Romney leads with 23 per cent of the vote.

But, if you’re Robert Jeffress, an Evangelical supporter of newbie Rick Perry, then whoa, jump back there skipper! Because Mitt Romney is Mormon, and Mormonism is “a cult.” And therefore Rick Perry is the only option for real Republicans to vote for.

It’s not too late to switch to Christianity, Mitt!

Perry, on the other hand, is a real red-meat Republican. He says he “opposes regulation of greenhouse gas emissions because it would have ‘devastating implications’ for the Texas economy and energy industry” — this coming from the guy who accepted over $1 million from a guy wanting to build a nuclear waste dump in West Texas.

Also, he almost fell asleep during a debate.

Then there’s laughingstock Michele Bachmann who claims that gay marriage “is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, thirty years.” — forgetting two overseas wars, health care, economic turmoil and about a million other issues facing the U.S.

Significantly, this is the woman whose husband, Marcus Bachmann, thinks that he can “cure” gay people through the use of therapy (and yes, unfortunately this guy is an actual therapist).

Bachmann also claimed that Barack Obama’s overseas trip to Asia was going to cost taxpayers 200 million dollars a day. Now I’m no financial expert, but even I know that’s a ridiculous statement.

Also in the running are Ron Paul, Jon Hunstman and Newt Gingrich. Basically, Paul is too much of a loudmouth, Hunstman is smart, but he ain’t catching fire, and Gingrich is just boring.

Finally there’s Herman Cain, a businessman who recently came into the political spotlight. Fighting Romney in the polls, Cain has come under fire for some of his political stances. For example, he called Social Security “a scam” and wants to lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. Add Cain’s opposition to all cases of abortion, gay marriage and “Obamacare” and we see he is no stranger to controversy.

With the presidential election not slated until November 2012, it may seem too early to care, but this is the United States, where they value their politics and presidential elections like we value hockey and Tim Horton’s. As vice-president Joe Biden might put it, “This is a big fucking deal!”

And why shouldn’t it be a big deal? It’s not like Canada where we pull a federal election out of our ass in six weeks; in the U.S. they can start preparing for the next election up to two years early. Now that’s a democracy!

But, what happened to the quitters? When Sarah Palin was parading herself across America (coincidentally) with the other GOP candidates, it seemed certain that the former Alaskan governor was going to enter a 2012 presidential bid. Only recently did Palin say she was not going to run for the White House. Did she falsely lead the American public on for months? “You betcha!”

There are other entertaining Republicans sadly missing from the race, like Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell and Donald Trump, who dropped out after milking as much publicity out of his bid as possible.

In the end, the only candidates who still have a hope in hell at grasping the Republican nomination for next year’s presidential election are Romney and Cain. In fact, they are the only candidates who can form a single coherent thought.

No matter how crazy these GOP candidates may be in this coming election, we can all sigh in relief that George Bush isn’t one of them. Thank God for the two-term limit!

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Graphic: DonkeyHotey/Flickr