So what does it take to become the Republican nominee to run against Barack Obama next year?

This is not a contest for the faint at heart or for that matter anyone with a less than solid grasp of the current zeitgeist that has transformed the Grand Old Party in the last few years from what was once described as Ronald Reagan's big tent of reasonably broad opinion into a frenzied club for religious zealots and science haters, where a fear of a multicultural and multi-racial America is cheered and where despite the crushing debt and financial problems the country faces no tax increases will ever be considered under any circumstances whatsoever.

It was Malcolm Turnbull who only a few weeks ago on the last Q and A program of the year in Australia pointed to the fact that in the current Republican Party 'you cannot be a credible candidate for Republican nomination as president if you do not say climate change is nonsense'.

As he pointed out, this is a long way from the position held by John McCain who went to the last election with a policy that was only slightly different from the one Barack Obama had. Jon Huntsman, who is still a candidate but one with absolutely no hope of getting anywhere near the front of the pack, may as well be a Democrat as far as most of those from the Republican base who'll have a say on picking their presidential contender are concerned. He told the American ABC that:

'When we take a position that isn't willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science has said about what is causing climate change and man's contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science and, therefore, in a losing position.'

Which in effect is where he now finds himself for sure. He should probably just give up and think about going back to work for his old boss. (Jon Huntsman's other big handicap is the fact that he was appointed to be Ambassador to China by none other than Barack Obama.)

Obama of course has failed to get any of his energy plans through a Congress so divided and partisan that almost nothing can get done at all which might go someway to explaining the recent Gallup poll that showed only 9 per cent of Americans thought Congress was doing a good job. So, in nearly half a century of Gallup polling apparently the only people or institutions that have been more unpopular than the current Congress are Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Mark Fuhrman, a detective in the OJ Simpson murder trial.

As someone on NPR noted here last week, that makes Congress now less popular than the idea of America turning to Communism, which stood at 11 per cent in another poll.

But back to the Republican Party.

In the last debate the new, 'anyone but Mitt Romney' frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, made the terrible mistake of suggesting that there was no way anyone was really going to throw out the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants that are already in the country and that help keep almost every restaurant afloat and every garden trimmed - even Mitt Romney's although he says he had no knowledge of it. Most expect that slip to cost Gingrich dearly in the next round of polling just as a similar soft (some might say realist) line on immigration did for Rick Perry.

Remember him? He called immigration hardliners 'heartless' and his poll numbers fell away almost as fast as a lot of American small businesses would if all the Latinos without visas were tossed out of the country. For his part Gingrich suggested that the 'illegals' who have lived here for 25 years or more and had families and put down roots should be given the option of starting a process to legal 'residency', not an amnesty even though as a former history professor he would know that amnesty has been a well trodden policy path in American history. Between 1893 and 1996 there have been six major amnesties and dozens of lesser amnesties. One of them was even granted by Ronald Reagan.

But in the Republican Party at the moment it seems the least informed and the most uncompromisingly ideological gets the biggest cheer. There's Herman Cain's assessment of foreign policy as an area that he doesn't really need to be across because when he was first appointed to Godfathers Pizza Company he had never made a pizza, 'but he learned'.

"If you want to solve a problem, go to the source closest to the problem and ask the right questions," he said.

Most recently he certainly appeared not to know much about one of the hottest foreign policy topics of recent times, Libya. And he says he's ready for all those tricky gotcha questions.

"When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-becki-stan-stan I'm going to say, you know, I don't know. Do you know?"

Then there's Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate, who when asked in a recent debate if society should let a person without health insurance die if the choice was to treat them for free or not to treat them at all said, "What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself. That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risk."

When the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer then asked him if he thought that "society should just let him die?" people in the audience could be heard shouting "Yeah!"

So what does it take?

In the end almost all the candidates have had their moments in the spotlight only to flame out. The one contender that's been polling consistently well has been Mitt Romney, and he's never got past an approval rating in the 20 per cent range. It's clear he hasn't captured the hearts and minds, but he's trying hard to accommodate the zeitgeist. He's overturned his previously pro-choice position and now says he doesn't support abortion and he's taking a much harder line on immigration than he used to. In 2007 he said "the 12 million or so who are here illegally should be able to sign up for permanent residency or citizenship" and he now calls the Gingrich idea wrong because "amnesty is a magnet". For all that the Republican base is still suspicious of him, they don't necessarily believe he has changed his 'liberal' ways and the more evangelical crowd think his Mormon religion is a heresy but he may yet be the last man standing. But those concerned Republicans might get some comfort form the fact that if you ask Democrats who they fear the most, Mitt Romney is the answer they most often give.

Michael Brissenden is the ABC's Washington correspondent.