That's right, my little Ned Beattys. When you start hearing banjos in the distance, it means only one thing: Republicans are forming exploratory committees to see just how unelectable they are in the upcoming presidential race.

And it's pretty telling that the names we're hearing most often from Baggerville are Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, proving at the very least that there's no way Obama can lose except if they dig up Reagan, attach cables to his limbs and make him a roadside attraction.

But others, some hardcore lunatics who have long since proven their Republican bona fides and others just trying, for some unfathomable reason, to attach themselves to the Republican brand. So let's look at the top ten Republican presidential hopefuls in a thumbtack Assclowns of the Week, shall we?

10) Donald Trump

The most interesting thing about Donald Trump is when his elaborate combover will finally give way and how many junior executive hangers on will be killed in the avalanche. Trump recently made the news by resurrecting the long-discredited birther conspiracy regarding the President's birthplace. This, obviously, is all the Republicans have to offer beside homophobia, Islamophobia, and a loathing for the Civil Rights Act, unions and child labor laws.

In a prime example of carrying coals to Newcastle (or bullshit to RNC HQ), Trump was paid money and given national exposure he didn't need by NBC for a nasty show called The Apprentice, sort of a Lord of the Flies/Animal Farm hybrid with styling gel and gabardine. Once good at building skyscrapers and naming them after himself, he's now reduced to rehabbing birther conspiracies in the air. And when Glenn Beck laughs at you, you know you haven't got a Giants fan's chances in LA.

9) Newt Gingrich

The former House Speaker had somehow achieved the miraculous in the last month: A way to support our invasion and bombing of Libya while somehow blaming the black guy for it all. Once almost handed his ASWF Entrepreneur of the Year Award to a DVD porn superstore until discovering that Burst Media was stimulating more than just the economy. No stranger to passion, Gingrich is so patriotic that he blamed Uncle Sam for falling into vaginas not belonging to his wife.

A recipient himself of the Franklin Graham Islamophobic Asshole of the Year award for two years running, this hypocritical serial adulterer made national headlines by screaming about Sharia law in the US and the erecting of the Cordoba Center two blocks from Ground Zero. The anti-Nostradamus, Gingrich has been wrong about everything yet still vacuums up enough money from mindless, racist minions every year to form exploratory committees that invariably tell him he's unelectable.

8) Herman Cain

Another Georgia lunatic? What's in the peaches down there? Seriously, who the fuck is this guy? Herman Cain at this point serves two purposes in Wingnuttia: A token to whom the Tea Baggers can point to as proof they're not really racist and the only Republican in America who's even more obscure than RNC Chairman Prince Remus Rice Prius Rinsed Penis.

In true conservative fashion, Cain was the CEO of a pizza joint named in honor of Carl Paladino. Through his work for Burger King and Godfather's pizza, has single-handedly contributed to American obesity more than transfat and sugar combined. For good measure, he also sabotaged the Clinton Health Care Plan 18 years ago out of fear it would induce Americans to eat less burgers and pizza. Dismissed by Jonah "Loadpants" Goldberg of the Weekly Standard by writing, "(I)t’s hard to imagine him amounting to more than an exciting also-ran." Another Islamophobe, he became a Tea Bagger darling a la Mitt Romney by saying he would never appoint any Muslims in his Cabinet. Currently slightly more popular among mainstream Republican voters than month-old anchovies.

7) Mitt Romney

If Caucasian blandness had an IPO or hedge fund, Mitt Romney would be richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. In '08, was one of many Republican presidential hopefuls, then Republican vice presidential hopefuls, then Republicans hopeful of retaining some iota of relevance to come out swinging against Muslims. His grounds were that Muslims don't represent more than 2% of the US population, even though this was coming from a guy belonging to an overrated cult centered around a Golden Bible no one's ever seen and believes in Good (or White) Jesus and Bad (or Black) Jesus.

The political Max Headroom, Romney triangulates more than a GPS with ADHD, sucking up to evangelicals, gun nuts, racists and other right wing fringe loonies. In the end, they decided on the crazy woman from Alaska who was even more glassy-eyed and devoted to killing animals than Romney while praying for the quick death of President McCain.

6) Mike Huckabee

An evangelical windbag who's so bland even this ordained minister and bona fide fundie can't lock up the evangelical vote. His biggest asset is being the Republican who's hardest to loathe. Even when he talks about a "state's right" to fly the Confederate flag or any of 100 other lunacies, you look at that "Aw shucks" Gomer face and cut him slack in a way akin to making allowances and proffering support to a failed Special Olympian.

May have a chance at winning an Iowa straw poll next year if he promises to make his cool Stratocaster bass guitar his running mate.

5) Haley Barbour

If former Attorney General John Ashcroft had a stupider, fatter, older brother sculpted out of hog lard, you'd get Haley Barbour. Just looking at the governor of Mississippi makes even ascetic Yankees crave biscuits and gravy. A former lobbyist now posing as a lobbyist posing as a governor, Barbour once shot a tourism ad exhorting people to swim in the Mississippi Gulf waters in spite of Deepwater Horizon tar balls washing up just out of camera range.

More recently, Barbour stated he didn't recall an offshoot of the KKK as being all that bad, certainly not racist but more like pro-white. Meanwhile, all over the neo-Confederacy, Tea Baggers and other bigots grabbed their loving cup ears and began doing hillbilly jigs. Most recently, Barbour's ex press secretary resigned when it came out he thought the trio of disasters in Japan was funny.

4) Tim Pawlenty

The only Republican in America who makes Mitt Romney look and sound more exciting than Dick Vitale on an acid trip during March Madness, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty once wrote a book called Courage to Stand. It proved to be an unintentional aid to the Obama health care bill by forcing Lunesta maker Sepracor into bankruptcy.

Pawlenty became a flavor of the day favorite to the Andrew Breitbart/James O'Keefe wing of the GOP by uniting with Bobby Jindal to cut state aid to ACORN, despite the fact that ACORN received no aid from Minnesota. So boring both personally and politically, his political rallies wind up looking like mini Jonestowns.

3) Jim DeMint

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is so conservative and tight-assed you couldn't pull a pubic hair out of his ass with a tractor. Thinks as long as it snows in winter, global warming is a hoax and Al Gore is a fraud. Late last year, DeMint said that gays and unmarried, pregnant women should not be allowed to teach in public schools.

Claimed on Fox that Obama's job-creating stimulus bill was "an attack on people of faith" after begging for tens of millions in earmarks stimulus funds for South Carolina. So conservative he makes fellow redneck bigot George Wallace look like Woody Harrelson by conspicuous relief.

2) Michele Bachmann

Joining Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell as aging stars of political porn, Michele Bachmann somehow continues to get reelected in Minnesota's 6th congressional district without any noticeable chapping of her lips. Indeed, this most notorious example of the Land of a Million Flakes will one day serve as required reading in political science classes in the future: The ability of the mentally handicapped to obtain and retain political power.

Once called for Obama and all liberals to be investigated for "unAmerican" activities despite HUAC and Joe McCarthy being dead for decades. Thinks the American Revolution began in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts. Thinks John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father and that our slave-owning forebears were committed to abolishing slavery. Oh, yes, please, let's all help put her finger on the Big Red Button.

Bachmann once exhorted her Tea Bagger followers in Colorado to commit suicide if Obama's health care initiative were to become law. Then the Sylvia Plath of politics threatened suicide in Colorado again. One suspects that Bachmann's ability to attract huge Tea Bagger crowds is connected to the truism that if you promise the people what they want, they'll come out for it.

1) Sarah Palin

Yes, Sarah dearest, there are lots of dogs in this Special Olympics Iditarod and you're not even the lead dog, anymore.

Once the hottest Republican on the planet earth, Sarah Palin's approval ratings among even Republicans had dropped faster than a bar of soap at a Greenwich Village bathhouse. Ah, where to begin with Sarah's unfittitude for the presidency? She does to the English language what Catholic priests do to 12 year-old altar boys, she's a hypocrite in her brief but happy political life, in her ghost-written books for which she was paid millions, on her reality show and everywhere else.

Like Newt Gingrich and all other Republicans, tells lies from her Mooselini cyberbalconies of her Facebook and Twitter pages that then become de facto truth and wisdom. Has turned the once-contemptible, sneering Valley girl head cheerleader stereotype into an actual debating style, snipes at the "lamestream media" until she has to pimp a new ghostwritten shredder fodder or TV show. Shamelessly uses her children as props and human shields like another politician we can think of.