Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp's surprising primary defeat Tuesday at the hands of a candidate who was backed by the Republican establishment could serve as a blueprint for future efforts to oust Tea Party members in GOP primaries.

While Huelskamp's race was characterized by attacks on his handling of issues specific to his rural congressional district, the success of efforts to frame a deeply conservative lawmaker as a Washington insider could embolden the groups who ousted Huelskamp to try the same tactics on other members who have bucked party leadership.

Tom Davis, former Virginia congressman and former chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, believes such an approach could work again.

But after the election, Republicans will likely hold fewer House seats in total, as Democrats are actively targeting more than a dozen seats presently held by GOP members. A winnowed-down GOP conference could allow the Freedom Caucus members to exert even more influence over the remaining majority.

"I do think that the Freedom Caucus, if they manage to keep the rest of their numbers, they're going to have more influence," said Ford O'Connell, a Republican strategist.

However, O'Connell said the factors of Huelskamp's race were too unique to translate easily to other primaries.

"I think this is more of a perfect storm," he said of the confluence of local interests and outside money the fueled Huelskamp's ouster.

"This could be replicated, but I'm not expecting this to be anything more than a one-off or an outlier at best," O'Connell added.

Read more from Sarah Westwood at The Washington Examiner

Political commentators Ellis Henican and Ford O’Connell appeared on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV on Wednesday to discuss the midterm elections.

Watch the video and read more at Newsmax.com

One need not hold a lot of sympathy for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to admit the man cannot catch a break.

Just when McConnell appeared to be putting some distance between himself and Alison Lundergan Grimes in his own race in Kentucky, his bigger dream — to finally become majority leader of the U.S. Senate — is in peril because Kansas, which hasn't elected a Democratic senator since 1932, may be poised to do so again.

Technically, Greg Orman, the wealthy businessman who may unseat 34-year congressional veteran Pat Roberts (R), is an independent. But he has run for the Senate as a Democrat before, donated to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and got Democratic nominee Chad Taylor to not only withdraw, but also fight to have his name removed from the ballot to help Orman.

Orman says he would caucus with whichever party is "clearly in control" of the Senate, but the Democrats did not withdraw their candidate and decline to nominate another for someone they weren't confident would caucus with their side. There are no coincidences in politics.

There is a path to 51 seats and the majority leader gavel for McConnell without Roberts winning a fourth term, but it is not an easy one.

Read more from Ford O'Connell at The Hill

Sarah Palin has come to the rescue. The Republicans’ 2008 vice presidential nominee – and big-time political lightning rod – took the stage Thursday in Kansas on behalf of the state’s endangered Republican senator, Pat Roberts.

Three-term Senator Roberts is widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican senator in the November midterms. A loss would seriously harm the Republicans’ chances of retaking the Senate.

Enter Ms. Palin. The former Alaska governor’s public favorability has declined since she shot to fame six years ago – but no matter. Among all the big-name Republicans rushing to Kansas to save Roberts, she like no other can reach the very voters who need to rally to Roberts’s side: tea party conservatives.  

“The primary badly damaged Roberts,” says Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “Palin actually may have the most important job of all the surrogates.”

Read more from Linda Feldmann at The Christian Science Monitor

Sen. Pat Roberts beat back tea party challenger Milton Wolf in Tuesday’s Kansas Senate primary — keeping intact the perfect record of sitting Republican senators and clearing the way for the veteran lawmaker to secure a fourth term in the November election.

The contest was seen as the second-to-last chance for the insurgent wing of the GOP to send a sitting senator packing in the 2014 primary season, with only Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee left to face a serious challenge in this off-year election cycle.

The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Roberts roughly three hours after the polls closed.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist, said the losses could spark some soul-searching among the GOP’s anti-establishment forces.

“As a career politician and a permanent fixture on Capitol Hill since the late 1960s who doesn’t even own a home in the state he represents, Pat Roberts embodies all that conservatives loathe, and by all means Roberts should have been ‘dust in the wind’ in this era of hyper-Beltway conservative discontent, yet he survived,” Mr. O’Connell said.

“Tea party groups have lost the element of surprise when trying to mow down an incumbent in high-profile races, and will likely need to go back to the drawing board and improve their tactics as well as their candidate selection,” he said.

Read more from Seth McLaughlin at The Washington Times