The early line-up of Republican presidential prospects hoping to challenge incumbent Pres. Barack Obama is weak 18 months before Election Day, Nov. 6, 2012.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (who had less than a snowball’s chance in Hades, to begin with, in my view) has voluntarily stepped out of the race. That was smart. Keep your good government job, Governor.

It looks like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s star has begun to dim. Besides, she and others in her family seem content to cash in on their celebrity status. Daughter Bristol, the one who got pregnant before getting married, went to the bank with Crazy Six-Figure Dollars preaching abstinence around the country: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has the same White, Southern “baggage” carried by Gov. Barbour in the national election theater, except that like Gov. Palin, he is a “former” governor, and not a current office-holder.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is maybe the responsible front-runner, except that he must answer the question about presiding over that state when it adopted healthcare reform that is what progressives wished so-called “Obamacare” had become–a universal, public-option system paid for with government money.

Gov. Romney is a nice, clean-cut guy (the Republican nominee in 2012 WILL BE A WHITE MALE, trust me on this one). He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The problem for me with Mormons is that until the late 1970s, the Mormon Church officially discriminated against Black people.

For more than century, until 1978 when church President Spencer Kimball received a revelation from On High, Black men were excluded from the church Priesthood. The priesthood is normally open to all boys and men 12 years and older, but Black men were believed to be under “the Curse of Cain,” therefore ineligible for priestly duties. They could however, still be waiters, and butlers.

Gov. Romney The First (Of Michigan), who ran for President in 1968, had been the CEO of General Motors and the Governor of Michigan, and was actually born to American parents in the Mormon Colonies in Mexico (a place where polygamy was likely practiced). I wonder what “The Birthers” would have said about that scenario. Speaking of Birthers, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) certainly has some questions of her own to answer on that score. In his speech to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner April 30, President Obama called her out by name, with a joke about her being born in Canada.

Well, I went to her bio page on Wikipedia, and sure enough, her birthplace was listed as somewhere in Canada, saying her parents took her to Iowa at an early age. When I got ready to write this column, and went back a few minutes later to check the precise city in Canada where she was born, her bio had been changed to say she was born in Waterloo, Iowa. Hmm-m-m? I smell a rat.

Finally, the most popular Republican in all the polls is Donald Trump. Before the WHCD event Trump said he didn’t think President Obama would dare say anything about him in his speech. After the dinner and a verbal whipping he received from Obama, The Donald was momentarily speechless.

Well, I’m just hoping to attend one of his press conferences. I sometimes play a journalist on TV. I have questioned Presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama and been photographed with those three. I watched the profanity-laced Celebrity Roast of Trump on the Comedy Channel, featuring Snoop Dogg and Michael “The Situation” Torrentino, among others. So, if I ever got a chance here’s what I’d ask the would-be POTUS:

“You said you were sending a team to Hawaii to investigate President Obama’s birth certificate. You did not. You said if the President released his birth certificate you would release your tax return. You did not. You said you have ‘seven billion f—ing dollars in the bank.’ You do not. You said if your (homely-looking…in my view) daughter Ivanka, who has a nice figure, was not your own child you might date her.

“You, Sir, are a depraved pervert, and as I’ve heard said on Capitol Hill, you are nothing more than a Lying Bucket of Warm Spit, who has declared bankruptcy at least three times and cheated on at least one of your multiple wives.

“The current incumbent aside, what in your wildest dreams makes you think you Sir, would ever be qualified to sit in the same office in which Franklin Roosevelt once sat??? Now. Answer that, if you dare!” There are many, many glaring chinks in what Republicans think is the armor of their 2012 Presidential candidates.