The back-to-back presidential nominating conventions that concluded with Donald Trump’s speech showed both sides intend to fight for the sliver of independent and moderate voters who will decide the election, each with a wildly different strategy in the final sprint to Nov. 3.

Trump’s convention depicted the president as a champion of “law and order,” taking aim at voters who do not approve of his divisive and inflammatory rhetoric but may be jittery about months of protests over racial injustice and police brutality that have sometimes turned violent.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican consultant close to the Trump campaign, said much of the convention’s programming was directed at voters who “might have soured” on Trump because of his divisive style or were still looking for reasons to support him.

Read more from James Oliphant at Reuters

The third night of the Republican National Convention was filled with impassioned defenses of law enforcement and celebrations of the military, calling them heroes under assault from the Left while President Trump stands with them.

One veteran Republican strategist said it was smart to suggest to voters they have a lot to lose by supporting Biden.

"In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump argued to many in the electorate — ‘what do you have to lose’ by voting for me? Hillary Clinton and the national media scoffed, but the electorate didn’t,” said Ford O’Connell. “In 2020, after three nights, President Trump and his surrogates are cogently making the case to many of those same voters that you have a lot to lose if you don’t reelect him. If team Trump continues to make this case over the next 60-plus days while simultaneously reminding voters that Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism, the voters who Trump needs to recapture — seniors, independents, suburbanites, conservative minorities — will come home to him, and Trump will win reelection."

Read more from W. James Antle III at the Washington Examiner

Supporters of President Trump are cooking up countermeasures to their Democratic foes — from handing out free cheeseburgers outside an Elizabeth Warren event to poke fun at the Green New Deal, to using a bullhorn to amplify their chants outside a Joe Biden rally.

With more than a year to go before the general election, the GOP is growing its ground game in New Hampshire — a key battleground state Republicans want to turn red after narrowly losing to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“What’s so enticing about New Hampshire is that Clinton won it by less than 3,000 votes,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “So they recognize there is an opportunity.”

The impeachment proceedings against Trump are only adding fuel to the fire for the president’s backers, supporters said.

O’Connell called Trump’s 2020 campaign a “well-oiled machine” and “a dramatic improvement” over the ragtag operation he ran as an outsider in 2016.

With incumbency on their side, Trump and his team are working in lockstep with the RNC and many of the state parties — much to the chagrin of the president’s three primary challengers, who are facing canceled contests in some states, but not New Hampshire.

Trump’s re-election campaign and the RNC are also sitting on a massive war chest, with a combined $125.7 million raised in the third quarter and $158 million in cash on hand.

“They’re in a good spot right now to be able to move people around” as needed in key states, O’Connell said. “They know this is potentially going to be a really tight election.”

Read more from Lisa Kashinsky at the Boston Herald

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine will deliver remarks entirely in Spanish at a rally in Arizona on Thursday, highlighting the growing importance his party places on Hispanics in presidential politics.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, is working to fill in what has quite literally been radio silence from Donald Trump’s campaign on Spanish language outreach efforts.

The RNC on Wednesday released an ad aimed at Hispanic voters, with the Spanish version to run on Telemundo and Univision, urging people to vote Republican. But it doesn’t mention the party’s presidential nominee by name, and Mr. Trump’s campaign has shied away from Spanish-language efforts.

In fact, he’s the first GOP nominee in years to forgo a Spanish-language version of his campaign website.

Mrs. Clinton has gone all-in on Spanish, with new ads Wednesday featuring actor Jimmy Smits speaking in Spanish. Mr. Kaine’s rally in Arizona, meanwhile, will be his second Spanish-only address in a matter of weeks. He already delivered such a speech at a church service in Miami last month.

“The Trump campaign has largely left this to the RNC and various super PACs,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “This is hardly a head-scratcher when you realize they’re not even waging a traditional air war overall.”

Read more from David Sherifinski at The Washington Times

Hoping to soften the party’s rough edges, the Republican National Committee announced a new ad campaign Thursday featuring a former prostitute and other unlikely GOP voters explaining why they embrace conservative principles.

The party said the campaign is meant to attract new recruits to its Republican Leadership Initiative organizing program, as it continues its multiyear effort to try to make inroads with minority and female voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The RNC said the $300,000 campaign would include television ads played during next week’s GOP debate in South Carolina and digital ads targeting potential recruits for the party’s RLI program.

Since the 2012 presidential election, when President Obama won a second term with the help of huge margins among Hispanic and black voters, the GOP has worked hard to reverse those trend lines.

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said the RNC deserves plaudits for actively working to dispel the public narrative that the GOP is the party of old white men, but the results this year are going to depend on who Republicans choose as their presidential nominee.

“They’re trying the best they can, but at the same time there’s only so much they can do,” he said. “The problem is political parties don’t have the power they used to … a lot of this work is up to the GOP presidential nominee.”

Read more from Dave Sherfinski at The Washington Times

The Republican National Committee’s push to limit the number of debates in the 2016 presidential primary could end up creating an arms race of sorts, with groups denied the chance to hold “official” debates instead hosting candidate forums that would serve much the same purpose.

Even as groups ponder how to handle the RNC’s new dictate, which will be formalized in the coming weeks, potential candidates say they’re open to participating in forums outside of the officially sanctioned debates, saying they are crucial to giving voters the chance to test their would-be nominees.

Some Republicans, especially in the party’s senior ranks, though, felt there were too many debates — intraparty clashes that diluted the party’s message and weakened eventual nominee Mitt Romney’s hand as he headed into the general election against President Obama.

The RNC is pushing to limit the number of debates.

Some RNC members said the challenge now will be for the party to figure out what constitutes an unsanctioned debate.

“As much as the Republican Party, rightfully so, wants to control the debates, the reality is that the networks have the upper hand, because a lot of candidates will want to boost up their name ID and be in everybody’s living rooms,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist. “By trying to basically control the debate process, they could be giving rise to a new round of sideshows.”

Read more from Seth McLaughlin at The Washington Times

A year after trying to make sense of their 2012 losses, the GOP is gearing up for big 2014 wins.  

Senate control looks within their grasp and Republicans aren’t in any danger of losing the House, but their optimism could be shortsighted. Strategists say the GOP still hasn't done enough to expand and grow their party to win the White House in two years. 

"I'm concerned we're going to make a lot of gains in 2014 and people are going to confuse that with success at the national level and learn the wrong lessons. It's two different electorates," said GOP consultant Ford O'Connell.

Republicans have the wind at their backs heading into the fall. A poor national climate for Democrats driven by President Obama's sagging approval ratings, an older, whiter mid-year electorate and a favorable Senate map all give them big advantages.  

But in 2016, none of that will be true. In a presidential year where they need to appeal to Hispanics, women and young voters, the GOP's response to its  "autopsy" a year ago has fallen short in many places. Immigration reform is all but dead, the party is still grappling with off-message remarks from some candidates. 

All those faultlines were addressed in the Republican National Committee's "Growth and Opportunity Project,” which celebrates its one-year mark Tuesday. The lengthy internal critique of what had gone wrong for the party in 2012 and how they needed to change in order to be able to win over an increasingly diverse electorate stressed those concerns and more. 

Republicans credit RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and his staff for making great strides on data, technology and get-out-the-vote operations, the things they have the most control over. They crow about last week’s Florida special-election win in a district President Obama carried twice. But some worry that on the report’s other recommendations, the party has failed to follow the RNC’s lead.

Read more from Cameron Joseph at The Hill

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Monday released a comprehensive report that pledged big changes to broaden the party by attracting minorities, gays and women, but he faces skepticism from those who fear the party is shifting away from its conservative roots.

Republican political consultant Ford O'Connell said the party is serious about making big changes before the next presidential election. Otherwise, the GOP faces being shut out of the White House for eight more years, especially if Hillary Clinton runs on the Democratic ticket.

"Republicans are really reading the tea leaves," O'Connell said. "This change is truly out of necessity."

Read more from Susan Ferrechico at The Washington Examiner

Depending on which Republican you ask, President Obama is either a power-hungry politician who will spew any lie to keep his iron grip on the Oval Office, or just a nice guy who is in over his head.

In the battle to tear down a president who remains personally popular with much of the electorate, a split is emerging in the GOP effort to define the president: Mitt Romney and his campaign have cast Obama as a Machiavellian mastermind, trying to dupe the country into supporting his socialistic plot. The second tack, taken by the Republican National Committee, is to portray Obama as a bumbling failure, a likable guy who just doesn’t have the skills to live up to his promises.

Both tactics are on full display this week, putting the party apparatus and its nominee at odds.

Republican observers acknowledge the disconnect but expect one of the tactics will win out.

“[Romney’s advisers] recognize that they’re not going to be able to make up the likability gap with Obama so part of it is bringing Obama down to our level. If I can’t go up, let’s bring him down,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said. “I think they’re sending out a test message.”

O’Connell said Romney’s tried the RNC approach and appears to have abandoned it.

“They’ve said over and over enough that he’s a likable guy and the polls are static,” he said. “So now there’s a chance to say, ‘He’s slinging mud at us … this is not the guy of hope and change.’”

Read more from Pema Levy & Evan McMorris-Santoro

Mitt Romney's campaign is pretending Saturday is the day before Election Day.

In the first of a series of massive volunteer mobilization efforts, the campaign and the Republican Party will undertake "Super Saturday," a day when GOP volunteers call and canvass hundreds of thousands of swing-state voters, just as they will before Nov. 6.

The goal is not just to know which voters are on board with Romney, but to test the presidential campaign's ability to turn out the vote — something the GOP struggled with in 2008.

The GOP will run these Saturday tests once a month. The information is used as the campaign progresses to guide decisions such as where to deploy volunteers, where to focus early-voting turnout efforts, and which areas have the most undecided voters.

In 2008, Republicans made 28 million voter contacts, Wiley said. That jumped to 44 million in 2010, a number that he says this year's effort will exceed.

Republicans have a formidable opponent in the Obama campaign, which has reactivated its volunteer network from 2008, opened dozens of offices in swing states and is running full tilt on social media. The campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

"In Northern Virginia you cannot go out and not trip over an Obama GOTV effort, and that should scare the Republicans," said Ford O'Connell, a Republican strategist.

Read more from Martha T. Moore at USA Today