No matter what the eventual outcome, this year's Republican primary race is sure to go down in history as one of the most bizarre political contests ever. Well, considering what happened in 2012, perhaps I should amend that with "...until the next one happens." We currently have two frontrunners, with everyone else running so far back in the pack they're ecstatic if they ever post a double-digit number in the polls (which few of them can manage to do, even in state-level polling). The two GOP frontrunners have, between them, a total of zero days of political experience. One is a megalomaniac billionaire and one is a world-class surgeon who seems to be trying to prove the old canard that doctors all think they've been promoted to God.

Plenty of ink has been spilled desperately trying to explain why Donald Trump is doing so well. Even more ink has been wasted trying to prove "Trump will eventually disappear," without a shred of evidence in the argument's favor. But it's only recently that the pundit world has even paid the slightest attention to Ben Carson. Which is odd, because his rise in the polls is even harder to fathom than The Donald's. Trump has bluster going for him -- in a huge way, as he might put it. His bombast is second to none, which he routinely showcases in the debates (another of which is happening Wednesday night). The American people have always loved a good showman, all the way back to P.T. Barnum. Consider that Minnesota and California -- pretty liberal states, mind you -- elected Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger not all that long ago to see the proof of this.

But Carson's rise is harder to explain. He's now leading the polls in Iowa, and while he's still trailing Trump nationally, he is slowly catching up (a claim absolutely none of the other GOP candidates can make). Carson is, in some ways, the anti-Trump. He's soft-spoken. He radiates calm (to the point of somnolence). He doesn't sound crazy. He is very hesitant to attack his rivals (especially Trump, although that could change, seeing as how Trump has started directing some attacks at Carson).

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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.

Republicans are getting a little worried, as they should. One House member from Alabama is already on the case, though, warming up the all-but-inevitable "Impeach Hillary Clinton Committee." No, really. Here's what Mo Brooks had to say about Hillary Clinton: "She will be a unique president if she is elected by the public next November, because the day she's sworn in is the day that she's subject to impeachment because she has committed high crimes and misdemeanors." Good thing Republicans are planning ahead, eh?

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Paul Ryan is now being hailed as the savior of the House Republicans. Whether he lives up to that lofty title should quickly become apparent. Changing leaders doesn't change the dynamics of the problem, so for all the praise Ryan is now getting he's still got an almost-impossible task in front of him. No wonder he didn't want the job in the first place. As the new House Republican savior, his main objective is going to be to save House Republicans from themselves.

The constitutional math will not change appreciably between now and the end of next year. The Senate is still going to have 46 Democrats in it, meaning Republicans are still six votes shy of a filibuster-proof majority. Even if Mitch McConnell did what the extremists are now asking for -- getting rid of the legislative filibuster altogether -- there is still a Democrat in the White House. What this effectively means is that the Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by their Tea Party faction, simply are not able to call the shots. They can pass all the bills they like, but if those bills are downright odious to Senate Democrats and President Obama, they will not become law. None of that has changed, no matter who wields the speaker's gavel in the House.

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It has been a busy few weeks for the Democratic presidential race. First the debate, then Jim Webb's exit from the race, and today the news that Vice President Joe Biden has declined to jump into the contest. Tomorrow, Hillary Clinton will testify before the Benghazi committee. All of this will have an effect on the voting public, but it's still too early to make any definitive statements as to how everything is going to shake out. Still, some trendlines are already emerging, and they could be very good news indeed for Clinton.

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It's been a few weeks, so it's time once again to take a peek at the Republican presidential primary race. There are new polls out today, and the most interesting thing about them is the reflection of the public's reaction to the first Democratic debate. I'll be writing about the Democratic side of things in the next few days (never fear), but for today I thought the Republicans were worth a quick look, seeing as how they'll be debating again next Wednesday.

There have been several changes in the polling in the past few weeks, although no dramatic overall shift in the way the structure of the race is shaping up. There are still, for instance, six frontrunners capable of polling above five percent -- the same six as last time. There are still four reliably polling above one percent but below five percent -- again, the same four. And the same five are polling below one percent with no chance whatsoever.

However, there have indeed been changes in the polling and the candidates' rankings. There are really four divisions in the relative support for the Republican field, not just three. The six at the top have cleanly separated into a frontrunner group (able to poll above 15 percent), and a wannabe-frontrunners group, polling between five and 10 (or, to be generous, 11) percent.

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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.

This turnabout was possible because a few Republicans admitted the true political nature of the committee to journalists. This gave the media permission to stop pretending the committee was created for any other reason than to take Clinton down. The public saw through this a long time ago, but it's now impossible for the media to ignore any more.

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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.

Because of the importance of the first debate of the season for Democrats, we're devoting the entire column today to scrutinizing the various talking points (good and bad) delivered by the candidates. This means this introduction is going to be possibly the shortest ever in one of these columns.

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I start this article with a premise, and then build to a conclusion. As with any conspiracy theory, it's entirely up to you to measure how believable or ridiculous you find any of it. I formulated the premise from reading thousands of comments to online articles (most of them in the Washington Post, because their comments section is always a lively one). The premise: everything that helps Hillary Clinton politically has, at its heart, a liberal conspiracy.

This belief is widely shared among a certain subset of commenters to political and opinion articles. Hillary gets some good press? Well, everyone knows the media is a hotbed of liberals conspiring to keep a Republican out of the White House. Hillary does well at a debate? The moderators were lobbing her softball questions, as part of the liberal media conspiracy. Hillary does a funny sketch on Saturday Night Live? New York City is the headquarters of the liberal conspiracy, obviously. Hillary flip-flops on an issue? The pundits will all explain why it really isn't a flip-flop in the first place, so Hillary doesn't even have to.

But now this conspiracy seems to have reached a dangerous level of penetration not only into the media, but into the highest ranks of congressional Republicans. Gasp! Allow me to make my case, if you will.

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In two of the three presidential debates which have so far taken place, marijuana legal reform has been brought up in a serious way. Right there, that's a mark of respect for marijuana reform that has simply never previously existed at this level in our nation's political debate. The concept that the federal "War On Weed" needs to end is now about as mainstream as it gets, and after the people have led so admirably on the issue in the past decade, the politicians are finally deciding it is safe to follow this trend.

This is a monumental political shift. In previous years, the subject of marijuana only came up for presidential candidates on a very personal level. Bill Clinton, famously, "didn't inhale." Since Clinton, many presidential candidates have admitted smoking pot at some point in their lives, most of them brushing it off as a "youthful indiscretion" (Barack Obama was notable for refuting Clinton with: "I inhaled frequently -- that was the point!"). But now we have moved on from the question of personal use back in college to seriously discussing how the federal laws on marijuana make absolutely no sense at all, and never did. The moderators asking the questions still need to do a bit of basic research (to come up with much better and more pointed questions), but for the first time the issue is being treated not as a laughing matter but as an issue that millions of Americans not only care about, but want to see changed.

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Below are my snap reactions after listening to tonight's first debate among the Democratic candidates for president. I say "listening to" because that's what I did, I should point out right up front. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I actually could only manage to catch the audio of the debate on AM radio. I mention this as possibly influencing my reactions, because ever since the first televised debate in history, the difference between watching and listening can at times be enormous (people who heard that debate on the radio thought Nixon won, people who saw it on television thought Kennedy won). So if there were any profound visuals tonight, I missed them.

Overall, I would agree with some of the closing statements -- this was a much more substantial debate than anything the Republicans have yet put on. No insults were hurled, no bigoted statements were made, on the whole it was a lot more sober than watching Trump take on all comers. However, having said that, tonight's debate was a lot more spirited and feisty than I expected. There weren't direct face-to-face confrontations, but a lot of differences were clearly outlined between the candidates' stances.

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