The Republican Party has been unabashedly candid about its mission during this election season. Their goal, as several party leaders have freely admitted, is to unseat President Barack Obama by any means necessary.

Give them credit for being open about their desire, though. Few politicos have the testicular fortitude to say what they really think.

But stop with the credit right there.

The frontrunners for the party’s presidential nod currently are Texas Governor Rick Perry, Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and the perplexingly popular Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

In a nutshell, Perry is George W. Bush on steroids, Bachmann could be classified as insane, Romney is a spineless puppet and Paul is doomed to play the role of Ralph Nader for the rest of his days.

But somehow, they have a more than legitimate chance of unseating Obama in the Oval Office, especially Perry.

GOP candidates have managed to garner support from the lunatic fringe throughout the country, an untapped resource for many politicians who don’t want to appear as unstable as the people they want to vote for them.

But now all bets are off. The GOP has embraced its inner craziness, and frankly, it’s carrying the party to the bank. Their Reagan-esque approach strikes a major chord with the section of people in the country who take more pleasure in living in the past than the present.

The days of even more intense and far-spread racial disparity are what many of these people consider the heyday of the country.

Bachmann has publicly spoken out against giving 11- and 12-year-old girls a vaccine to help prevent them from contracting the human papillomavirus later on in life. Perry called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” which causes one to question whether or not he actually knows what a Ponzi scheme is. When Paul said an uninsured patient on life support should be left to die, he was met with disturbing applause. Romney, who passed a law while he was governor that gave universal health care to everyone in Massachusetts, has shied away from his gubernatorial actions because they’re seen as too far to the left on the political spectrum.

These are the people who could potentially hold the country and the rest of the free world in the palm of their hands.

That’s the kind of thing nightmares are made of.