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Good Wednesday morning. JOSH HOLMES — former Mitch McConnell strategist, now president and founding partner of Cavalry LLC (“Cavalry is here”) — gives Playbook readers his take on each of tomorrow night’s prime-time debaters, in the order Fox’s polling-based rank for podium position and the opening questions:

In an early December meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters, Executive Director Ward Baker gathered the 2016 class of Senate incumbents to deliver a harsh message: This is a new campaign world, and your 2010 win doesn’t mean a thing.

That’s not just banner ads on Web pages, it’s everything from microsites on your opponent to voter identification to rapid-response, Republican digital-media expert Michael Duncan says. “If you just see digital as a fundraising ATM or a place to run TV ads, you’re undermining the efficacy of digital,” Duncan said. “A holistic digital strategy involves search, social display, video, and must be data-centric.”

Issue management firm Cavalry describes itself as “combining the experience of serving at the highest levels of the U.S. federal government with proven, presidential-level campaign capabilities.”

How fitting that Holmes serves as president and founding partner, given that he has been touted as the “mastermind of team Mitch” for his management of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign, hailed by pundits as one of the most effective congressional campaigns of 2014.

Former high-ranking aides to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have formed an “issues management” firm called Cavalry, according to an announcement.

Josh Holmes, McConnell’s former chief of staff, has joined forces with the former staff director of the Senate Republican Communications Center, John Ashbrook to create the firm. The two men also helped mastermind the senator’s 2014 reelection campaign.

John Ashbrook, a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is leaving Capitol Hill after more than 10 years. The staff director of the Senate Republican Communications Center and a key to the GOP’s messaging strategy, Ashbrook is expected to depart the GOP leader’s office in February. A fixture …

Power Player of the Week: Josh Holmes

Much of the movie “Fargo” takes place in Minnesota, the home state of the aide in charge of the campaign that propelled Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell to the role of Senate majority leader in the next Congress.

It’s fitting that Josh Holmes…

Having run Mitch McConnell’s bruising campaign to keep his seat, Holmes is dead center on the GOP suck-up circuit. “Republicans have one campus now—the Capitol,” says a GOP operative. “One reason it’s controlled by us is Holmes.”

See the full video here.