The Republican presidential candidates don't seem to realize it, but they're in the process of seriously undermining their own "tough guy" brand. Republicans have always seen themselves as "the Daddy party" (as opposed to Democrats' "Mommy party," of course), which has always meant no-nonsense toughness in the face of any opposition to their agenda. But how can American voters square this with the collective hissy fit the GOP candidates are now throwing over debate moderators? To put it the most obvious way, why should any voter believe that any of these folks will be able to get tough with (for example) Vladimir Putin, when they can't even handle snarky questions from journalists? Republicans seem to have now embraced what was (ironically) a major political problem for Jeb Bush's father -- the wimp factor.

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Hillary Clinton just had the best week of her campaign yet. Not only did she shine at the Benghazi hearing yesterday, three of her Democratic opponents dropped out of the presidential nomination race. Joe Biden was never actually in the race, but his announcement that he wouldn't run was more significant than Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee ending their campaigns. This leaves Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and Lawrence Lessig. Of those four, only Sanders and Clinton have any chance at winning the nomination, and Hillary's doing better in the polls than Sanders. So, all in all, a very good week for Hillary Clinton.

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This Thursday, Hillary Clinton will appear (once again) in front of the latest congressional committee to investigate Benghazi. The first seven investigations have turned up precisely nothing, but that didn't stop Republicans from trying one last time to do political damage to Clinton. This latest committee was necessary (obviously) to keep the issue alive right into the 2016 campaign season. But now the committee itself is under the public's microscope, which means that the focus will be more on the Republican questioners this Thursday, and not so much on Clinton.

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After two seemingly-endless Republican debates, this week the Democratic candidates for president finally got their turn to face off against each other on national television. While the audience was smaller (since Donald Trump was not on stage), it was still a lot bigger than most political debates in the past -- over 15 million people watched on CNN, and a further million livestreamed it. This is up from the usual audience of 2-to-5 million, it should be noted, from years past.

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So we're down to the paltry number of "only" 15 Republican candidates for president, as Scott Walker has now joined Rick Perry on the sidelines of the race. I must admit, I'm doing a pretty horrible job of picking who will exit the race in what order, as when I wrote about the subject last month, neither man was on my list of the first five candidates I thought would drop out earliest. Both Perry and Walker had substantial support from the billionaire class, which meant both had plenty of funds pouring in to super PACs to support their candidacy. The problem for both men, in the end, turned out not to be lack of funds to air television ads, but rather lack of funds to keep the lights on and pay their official campaign staff. Before their respective exits, Perry put almost all his campaign staff on a volunteer basis (because he couldn't afford the payroll) and Walker announced he was pulling back everywhere but Iowa, and shrinking his campaign staff accordingly. So even with millions sitting in super PAC coffers, what killed their campaigns in the end was lack of financial support for the campaign itself.

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After having just sat through over five hours (!) of Republicans debating each other, I have to say my brain is somewhat numb. So I'm not going to try to do any high-level analysis of the 25 pages of notes I took, but instead rely on just snap reactions to what I've just witnessed at the Shrine of Saint Ronald of Reagan's Magic Airplane. I write these snap reactions for a reason, and the reason is to see how differently I saw the debates from all the professional pundits out there. Come tomorrow, I'll read what everyone else has to say, and if the past is any measure, I'll be astonished at what settles in as conventional inside-the-Beltway wisdom. All quotes are transcribed by me hastily, and may not be exact, I should mention in passing, too.

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September is always an amusing time of year for politics-watchers, because inevitably Congress will return from their five- or six-week-long paid vacation and then immediately start whining that there is so much on their plate that they simply won't have time to get everything done. Without, of course, ever seeing the irony of such statements (after taking all of August plus a week or two off). This year is no different, of course. Congress is back and they're already moaning about how much they have to do in September. After all, they've got an upcoming budgetary train wreck to create, the Pope is going to visit, and -- first on their list of looming deadlines -- they're supposed to vote on the Iran nuclear deal. It now seems the Republicans are going to fumble this one badly, due (once again) to the intransigence of the House hardliners.

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President Obama had some fun this week, and by doing so actually forced the media to tackle a serious subject on his agenda. The fun part was taking the whole press corps up to Alaska, and even filming an episode of Bear Gryll's celebrity survivalist show. I certainly never thought I'd type a sentence linking President Obama and Bear Grylls, but then we certainly do live in strange times. In a more normal political (but no less partisan) atmosphere, Obama might have been roundly criticized for acting almost Putin-like, being photographed as a tough guy in the great outdoors. Who knows, when the episode airs, he still may face such carping from Republicans. But seeing as how the Republican presidential race is currently redefining the term "cult of personality" in a major way, I don't think the charge is going to carry much weight. It's hard to argue that the dignity of the Oval Office means not appearing in a reality television show when the guy leading the pack on your side is a reality-show television star, after all.

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Senator Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Senate Democrat to indicate she'll stand with President Obama on the Iran nuclear deal, which is significant -- although, in all likelihood, also merely symbolic. The media are reporting it is significant because it assures Obama that his veto won't be overturned, but what they're mostly missing is that a Senate veto-override vote likely wouldn't even have to happen.

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The entire Trump phenomenon reminds me of a basic rule from the world of magical/fantasy fiction. It's not quite Asimov's "three laws of robotics," but it's still been used my many authors who write about wizards casting dangerous spells. The rule of thumb among wizards? "Do not call up that which you cannot put down." Don't summon demons or otherworldly forces if you're not strong enough to defeat them, in other words.

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