Democrats’ sweeping attempt to overhaul the nation’s election system fell to a whimpering defeat Tuesday, dealing President Biden his first major legislative loss.

While the immediate cause of death was a Republican-led filibuster, the legislation, which sprawled across more than 800 pages of text and would have overridden state election laws across the country, collapsed under the weight of its own liberal tilt.

All 50 Republicans voted to derail the bill, leaving it 10 votes shy of the 60 needed to overcome the filibuster.

Democrats labeled the bill the “For the People Act,” but the strictly partisan debate belied that ambitious name. Each party accused the other of trying to rig elections in their favor.

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said forcing a vote on the bill accomplished several goals for Democrats, including allowing Mr. Schumer to tell the left that he tried.

Mr. O’Connell said that raising left-wing issues time and again will make the ideas in the bill seem less radical to voters. He said Democrats likely will use the vote to accuse Republicans of racism.

“If they don’t get their way, they’ll use blame and shame,” he said.

That was the approach Mr. Schumer took Tuesday morning. He said Republicans who derailed the bill were siding with Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud.

Read more from Kery Murakami at The Washington Times

Federal investigators on Wednesday raided former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s home and office as part of an ongoing investigation into his dealings in Ukraine.

They descended on the properties after obtaining a search warrant as part of an ongoing probe into his business deals and purported role in the recall of Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was abruptly removed from her post in early 2019.

Investigators are said to be reviewing whether Mr. Giuliani violated foreign lobbying laws while working as an attorney for former President Donald Trump.

The raid shook Washington and the legal world. Some said it smelled bad, given Mr. Giuliani’s proximity to Mr. Trump and criticism of the current president’s son.

“This looks like prosecutorial harassment of a political opponent,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist. “It seems to me the Biden administration is punishing Trump supporters.”

And Mr. Giuliani, he said, is “Trump supporter No. 1. That should raise a lot of eyebrows.”

Read more from Jeff Mordock and Tom Howell Jr. at The Washington Times

Congressional Republicans have a plan for Democrats’ repeated claim that White supremacists infest the Republican Party: silence.

Challenging accusations of racism and White supremacism is pointless because it won’t stop the name-calling, Republican lawmakers say, but sooner or later the Democrats will go too far.

Republican political strategists warned that Mr. Biggs and his colleagues are making a huge mistake.

Pushing back against accusations of racism is a stronger play, said Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist.

“It’s a reasonable fear,” Mr. O’Connell said. “But I don’t think they understand how Democrats move the goal posts in this arbitrary narrative of White supremacy. Eventually, they are going to have to confront the White supremacy allegations head-on because if you allow Democrats to go on and on the public will continue to believe it.”

Read more from Jeff Murdock at The Washington Times

Republican Party officials from across the country are not blaming President Trump for the party’s defeats in Georgia’s runoffs but instead are rallying to make election security its top priority in the next cycle.

At the Republican National Committee Winter Meeting in Amelia Island, Florida, party officials remained steadfast Wednesday in support of Mr. Trump and his remake of the party, despite the election setbacks that gave Democrats a Senate majority and complete control of the levers of power in Washington.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist with close ties to the White House, said the mayhem at the Capitol shouldn’t take away from legitimate concerns about election integrity.

“Those issues aren’t going to go away,” he said. “The Democrats do not want to have this discussion.”

Mr. Trump and his allies failed in scores of lawsuits challenging the election results in battleground states.

Read more from S.A. Miller at The Washington Times

President Trump has once again slashed a dividing line through the heart of the Republican Party with his demand that lawmakers reject the results of the Nov. 3 election, but this time the pushback is stronger.

Many erstwhile Trump allies say he has finally gone too far and asked too much. Seeking to upend President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s victory threatens the very foundations of America’s electoral democracy, they say.

Desperate to remain in office and convinced, despite a lack of evidence, that the election was stolen from him, Mr. Trump has asked Congress to reject the electoral votes of some states he lost to Mr. Biden and to deliver a second term to him.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist, said Republican voters are likely to support the fight.

“Obviously, the base of the Republican Party is in lockstep with Trump. They believe this election was stolen from them,” he said.

That feeling goes beyond the vote counting to include disparate media treatment of Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden and the role large social media companies played in censoring Republicans.

“I think Josh Hawley has a brilliant argument to make,” he said. “All we’re talking about is having a debate on the floor.”

Read more from Stephen Dinan at The Washington Times

President Trump, eyeing a screaming throng of supporters in Arizona last week, ventured into what would have been considered GOP blasphemy a decade ago.

“We all liked Ronald Reagan, but nobody ever said, ‘We love you. We love you. We love you,’ ” the president said in Bullhead City. “And he wouldn’t get crowds like this. If Ronald Reagan — who I consider to be top-notch — if he came here, he’d have a couple hundred people legitimately … we’re having 25, 30, 35, 40, 45,000 people.”

The crowd cheered.

"What Trump has taught Republicans is to have a backbone and a spine,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist with close ties to the White House. “Don’t back down from the media and the Democrats when you get double-teamed on a particular idea.”

Read more from David Sherfinski at The Washington Times

Republicans are worried that a Democratic takeover of the Senate is increasingly likely, and many are hoping for high turnout of President Trump’s conservative base in key states as the party’s last, best chance to hold on to power.

Polling in several Senate races, as well as in the presidential campaign, has turned so grim for Republicans that lobbyists in Washington are “game planning” for Democratic control of both the Senate and the White House. Democrats already hold a majority in the House and are likely to gain seats there.

Although some Republican candidates have tried to distance themselves from Mr. Trump in recent days, Republican Partyconsultant Ford O’Connell said that strategy is “a fool’s errand.”

“Control of the Senate is almost directly tied to the presidential race,” Mr. O’Connell said. “If Trump wins the state, it’s very, very likely that the Republican [Senatecandidate] is going to win that state as well. If Trump wins North Carolina, Tillis wins. I don’t see a way that McSally wins Arizona without Trump winning Arizona. It’s clear that Republicans are voting for Donald Trump first and foremost.”

Read more from Dave Boyer at The Washington Times

Voters want to see immigrants with criminal records deported, rioters and looters arrested and prosecuted, and border security stiffened, according to a Harvard poll that suggests there is ample room for President Trump to sell his law-and-order message — if he can break through questions about his character.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies/Harris pollhave a favorable opinion of police, compared with 51% for the Black Lives Matter movement. Antifa, the left-wing “anti-fascist” movement, has just 14% approval.

About three-fourths want to see the border tightened and want to see illegal immigrants who commit crimes deported rather than protected, as sanctuary cities do.

But Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist with close ties to the White House, said Mr. Trump can win by hammering home an issues-based message about his record over the past four years and his plans for the next four.

“From economic stewardship to law and order to tighter border security to no more crippling economic shutdowns — the issues are overwhelmingly on President Trump’s side,” he said. “And rather than trying to out-personality Biden, which there’s nothing wrong with, Trump would be better served by challenging Biden on the issues and reminding voters what he has done and where he wants to go.”

Read more from Stephen Dinan at The Washington Times

Ride-sharing company Lyft’s new turn-out-the vote effort in cities in five battleground states has sparked outrage from conservatives who think it is a ploy to help Democrats win in November. 

Lyft has formed a partnership with More Than A Vote, an advocacy group led by Black athletes including basketball player LeBron James, to provide free and discounted rides to polling locations in major cities in five key battlegrounds: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Lyft did not answer a question about whether it would provide comparable ride-sharing transportation to rural voters as it plans to do for urban voters in the five cities targeted by More Than A Vote.

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, who formerly ran for Congress in Florida, said Thursday he thought Democrats may undermine Lyft’s voter-turnout efforts by their vocal push for mail-in ballots that have created fear about in-person voting.

“Normally, I would be extremely concerned about this because it’s geared toward almost exclusively turning out Democratic votes. That said, Democrats have turned away the vast majority of their voters from in-person voting,” Mr. O’Connell said. “They’ve scared [voters], but at the same time, it is a weapon in their arsenal. The only question is whether they choose to promote it.”

Read more from Ryan Lovelace at The Washington Times

The Trumpian rift in the Republican Party has deepened in recent days as allies of one of the former Republican presidents and former White House nominees have taken steps to endorse the Democrat.

The Republican anti-Trump forces willfully overlook the president’s wins on the conservative scorecard, including cutting taxes, appointing hundreds of conservative judges, confronting illegal immigration and rebuilding the military, said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist closely allied with the White House.

“The fact that they are going to throw that all away out of spite makes you questions whether they are actually conservatives,” he said.

Mr. O’Connell said that beating Mr. Trump in November would not turn back the clock for the Republican Party.

“The party is going to carry forward a lot of the things Trump taught them. The number one thing Trump taught them was to have a backbone. For years, Republicans did not have a backbone,” he said. “They are not getting their party back.”

Mr. O’Connnell said the old school establishment that opposes the president has lost touch with the party’s base.

“Here’s what these people miss and what the Republican grassroots have figured out,” he said, “We can always get a new set of leaders. We can’t get a new set of grassroots. If you ignore your grassroots, you’re ignoring your party to its own political peril.”

Read more from S.A. Miller at The Washington Times