Look, I don't want to start another conspiracy theory about President Obama but clearly the man has sold his soul to the devil. There is simply no other explanation for recent developments and I am selflessly willing to take up birther investigator Donald Trump's mantle and discover the truth because (catch in the throat) I love my country and (menacing tone of voice) something is definitely up. Maybe Obama really was born in America, but he has definitely made a pact with Satan.

When blues musician Robert Johnson famously if possibly not factually flogged his soul, he got in return superior guitar skills; when aged Joe Boyd did the same in the Faustian musical Damn Yankees, he was reborn as a dashing baseball player. As for Obama, just a few months ago he was being widely dismissed as a "one-term president"; now, while I can't guarantee Obama will win the election next year (OK, I am partial to a Saturn-splattered turban, but my crystal ball recently cracked), I can say that his Republican rivals are fast becoming farcically unelectable. Some might argue that this is the inevitable result of a Republican party that has painted itself into a corner by focusing so much on social values and twisting its economic ones into such a knot that it claims to be a party for lower earners (it is, but only in the sense that it wants lower earners to pay high taxes so the rich don't have to). But I say that only something truly satanic could conjure up what the GOP has vomited out this time round and, to prove it, I bring you the York Notes guide to the Republican candidates.

Rick Perry

There are many reasons why Perry is repulsive to liberals – his enthusiasm for the death penalty, the unsayable name of his family's former hunting lodge, the fact that he has a hunting lodge – but these are irrelevant to the Republican base. Ditto his inarticulacy, as heaven knows inarticulate governors of Texas have become Potus in the past. The fact that he gave a, shall we say, slurred and confused speech last week (he even made some very un-Republican jazz hands) hints at problems to come. He is a terrible debater and can't even top the polls in the state he governs, as he is currently tied there with Herman Cain. Don't let the hunting-lodge door bump you on the ass on your way out, Perry!

Herman Cain

President of a pizza chain I have never even seen in all my pizza-eating days, Cain is currently leading the field even though he is not actually running for president. ABC news recently discovered that his Iowa HQ has no employees, suggesting he is, as Jason Farago wrote, "on the most high-profile book tour since Sarah Palin's Going Rogue". In the space of 24 hours this week, Cain's campaign was hit by both a sex scandal (when asked whether he'd been accused of sexual harassment, Cain "breathed audibly, glared at the reporter and then responded, 'Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?'") and allegations of possible financial impropriety. Fortunately for him and America, he is not, as I said, really running for president, so none of this actually matters.

Mitt Romney

For all the Democrats whose hearts broke in the 2004 election when the only person their party could rustle up to run against Bush was John Kerry, Romney is payback. He is the Republican version of Kerry: inconveniently wealthy, astonishingly uninspiring and with "second place" stamped through him like a stick of generically handsome Brighton rock. Romney has come second so consistently in the polls throughout his campaign that I'm beginning to suspect he is sponsored by the number two, like an episode of Sesame Street. In a time of high unemployment and social dissatisfaction, a photo recently surfaced of Romney that can only be described as his Bullingdon club picture; it shows him shoving cash in his jacket and grinning devilishly alongside his equally money-hungry former colleagues at the private equity company he founded. He signed Massachusetts's healthcare law, which has similarities to the healthcare law later pushed by Obama and so abhorred by Republicans.

Finally, he's a Mormon. As the ridiculous rumours about Obama's non-Muslim status reminded everyone, objecting to someone on the grounds of their religion is truly disgusting – not that this has ever stopped the American electorate. To those who don't know anything about this once niche, now increasingly mainstream religion, here is a quick primer:

1. "Mormonism is closer to Islam than to Christianity," said American comedian Bill Maher. Not being a theologian, I'd rather not get into that. But it is true that Mormonism isn't traditional Christianity because traditional Christians don't believe, for example, that God was once a man who lived on a different planet, as Mormons do. And in a country as Christian as America, that could be problematic.

2. Mormonism has been plagued by accusations of racism, stemming from claims made by several of its central figures, such as that black people have "the mark of Cain" on them.

3. As recently as 2010, the Mormon church was reprimanded for posthumously converting Jewish victims of the Holocaust who had died in the camps. They have been caught doing this repeatedly, despite promises to stop.

Surely only dark arts could have secured such an opposition for Obama. And there isn't even space to mention Cain's pizza-inflected rendition of the national anthem. That sound you heard on the breeze? That was the sound of Obama laughing.