Even if Donald Trump is “really rich”—as he reminds the world frequently—he doesn’t have nearly enough money to fund a general-election campaign, if he ends up being the Republican nominee for president.

Trump has made it this far mostly by self-funding his campaign, with help from donors who have sent in around $7.5 million in contributions of $2,700 or less. But that model won’t work in the fall if it’s Trump v. the Democratic nominee, most likely Hillary Clinton. “We’ll see an end to the self-funding if he becomes the nominee,” says Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, who worked on the 2008 McCain-Palin campaign. “He’ll have to raise in excess of $1 billion.”

Republican donors have plenty of money to give, but Trump is in a tricky spot because he has sworn off super PACs, the groups able to raise unlimited amounts from wealthy contributors. Trump says donors writing six-, seven- or eight-figure checks “have corrupted our politics and politicians for far too long,” and has vowed not to accept big donations.

Read more form Rick Newman at Yahoo Finance

Even though the fight over the Department of Homeland Security funding bill in Congress in an effort to defund President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration was destined to fail, it was a fight worth having, Wisconsin Rep. Reid Ribble tells Newsmax TV.

"The point of the matter wasn't necessarily whether the president would accept it or not because everybody recognizes that he would veto it," Reid said Wednesday on "America's Forum" with J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan. 

Republican strategist Ford O'Connell, who also appeared on Newsmax TV with the Wisconsin Republican, said that the reason why the DHS funding bill the Republicans were proposing failed is because "principle doesn't win tough legislating fights, messaging does, and the Republicans got outflanked on messaging."

"When you get outflanked in a messaging game, I have a hard time believing that we're going to beat Obama down the line because we're going to have more of this," O'Connell added. 

Ribble said that he agrees with O'Connell, adding that "you have to put a lot of it on the Senate."

Watch the video and read more from Courtney Coren at Newsmax.com 

If anyone was in control of the House floor Friday, it was San Francisco Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, not the Republicans who won full control of Congress in November.

Less than two months into Republican governance, House GOP leaders suffered their most humiliating defeat yet on the House floor in the battle over funding the Department of Homeland Security, thanks in large part to Pelosi’s ability to marshal her shrunken Democratic minority when it counts.

The Republican leadership team, including Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, demonstrated a stunning inability to do the same.

“Pelosi and her House lieutenants are bleeding the Republicans dry,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP political analyst.

“Giving Republicans a one-week reprieve was a stroke of genius,” O’Connell said. “It should earn Democrats some goodwill with the American public,” while leaving Republican leaders a week to devise a new plan to avoid a partial shutdown of the second-largest agency in the federal government.

“Democrats can say to the American people, 'We gave the Republicans one more week to get their ducks in a row because we shouldn’t play politics with Homeland Security,’” GOP analyst O’Connell said. While both parties are playing politics with Homeland Security, “it’s just that the Democrats look better.”

It may not be enough for Pelosi and the Democrats to retake the House in 2016, given the size of the GOP majority, O’Connell said, but it “could have the public questioning Republican leadership” ahead, where a host of thorny issues await.

Read more from Carolyn Lochhead at the San Francisco Chronicle

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made sure that every single Democrat has co-sponsored legislation to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, hoping to eliminate any confusion over whom to blame if the agency partially shuts down at the end of this week over an immigration brawl between congressional Republicans and President Obama.

Every Senate Democrat, including California’s Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, has signed a similar letter expressing the same position. They backed it up with their fourth vote Monday night blocking House legislation that would defund Obama’s executive action last fall that lifted the threat of deportation and authorized work permits for 4 million immigrants who are in the U.S. without legal documentation.

Democrats see themselves in a win-win position, said Republican political analyst Ford O’Connell.

“They feel that if we have this partial shutdown, voters are going to blame Republicans and therefore undergird the argument that they’re not serious about governing,” O’Connell said. If Republicans back down and fully fund Homeland Security, he said, Democrats “know that what will happen is eventually the conservatives will turn on the establishment Republicans.”

For GOP leaders, O’Connell said, “there’s a certain portion of the conservative base they’re going to have a hard time satisfying on this issue.”

Read more from Carolyn Lochhead at The San Francisco Chronicle

A push by House Republicans to reverse President Obama’s executive action on immigration has put their vulnerable Senate counterparts in a tough electoral spot. 

The GOP faces a much tougher 2016 map, and Hispanic groups are warning of political fallout over the issue of deportations at a time when the party is trying to win the White House and defend its new Senate majority. 

Worried about their party’s political fate, centrist Senate Republicans are balking at the prospect of a messy fight with the president.

Two other centrists, Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), expressed reservations with the House effort last week.

With the House bill headed for certain defeat in the Senate, some GOP strategists predict it may not even get a vote in the upper chamber because it would needlessly imperil incumbents facing reelection.

“I don’t think they’ll vote on the House version. They’ll probably make some minor changes to it,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist.

O’Connell predicted that Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rubio, two potential 2016 presidential contenders, would approach the debate cautiously for fear of offending either conservative primary voters or Hispanics in the general election.

Read more from Alex Bolton at The Hill