Perry? Bachmann? Each a wing-nut, which will fame out in South Carolina is not specifically asked, in the course of subjectively rating relative wing-nuttery; this link.
On a subjective dangerousness index, I thing the fear and loathing title goes to Perry. He's awful. And glories in it.
That leaves only Romney, as media favorite. And Ron Paul, as media pariah. Doesn't that really make you favor Ron Paul?
My view is that Ron Paul COULD beat Obama because the disenchanted and troubled progressives who are feeling quite used by White House conduct could consider Ron Paul as an actual and real option. Contra to Perry. To Bachmann. To Romney, each in his/her way a religeous extremist - Mormonism not being mainstream-anything by any measure I understand. And that probably is why the mainstream corporate-owned media is doing all it can to derail Ron Paul, attempting marginalization early and often, in the staged drama.
I believe Perry and Bachmann each already has established religeous extremism as a key portfolio tool to appeal to a fringe GOP constituency. In contrast, Romney has been given a free pass on the religeous extrimism front. Is that fair? Consider a myth -- Somebody named Joseph Smith, (not the basketball player who spent some of his career with the TWolves), in the New York finger lakes region in the early 1800's dug up sacred buried gold plates located with the help of a guiding angel Moroni (yet they call themselves Mormons), and deciphered the gold plates with help of magical tools, and reburied them never to be seen again. Yet, there were loyal sworn witnesses then to parts of that being true based on alleged personal knowledge, so we can believe it as truth?
Huh?
Paid reporters have had nothing to say about the quaintness of all that? Ron Paul is quaint and outside of mainstream? That stuff is not? Indeed, not even worth shining sunlight on it?
What I think IS true about the Mormons, there are lots of them in Salt Lake City, and beyond doubt the Mountain Meadow Massacre did, as a historical event, really happen. While a disturbing story, it says little about Mitt Romney, 21st century. But the image of planned slaughter is disturbing, lingering baggage, to a belief system [and don't forget the wars and pillage all over Europe as outgrowth of the Reformation - which is merely further away in time from the 1857 Mormons' calculated bloodletting].
Strangely, among all the hokum-bunkum, the press is channeling its "viable candidate" reporting as if Ron Paul is the incredible of the bunch of GOP wannabes. Should we at least ask why?
(Wait - I forgot, Gingrich the self-publishing bookseller, and Santorum a former Senator resoundingly rejected by Pennsylvania voters after they saw what they'd elected and had big-time buyer's remorse, each still an ostensible candidate because neither has yet Pawleytyed. Back to what matters.)
Give me a break time. Are we being channeled and set up for four more years of Obama, with that early-campaigning scenario, handled by the press now, as it is? What does it look like to you?