Dont worry, be happy we begin this afternoon with the gop. Please be sympathetic. They are meeting together in North Carolina for the First Time Since their november drubbing. And it does seem as though republicans are working through some of the five stages of grief, denial, anger, karl rove bargaining for ohio, a grim winter of depression, and are now moving slowly toward acceptance that something has gone badly wrong. But thats not to say anything is wrong with their leadership. Oh, no. After all, today theyve reelected as chairman the man who presided over the many conspiracies of the 2012 campaign, Reince Priebus. Mr. Priebus appears to have done a little bit of new age soul searching. Thats my agenda for the next two years, renew our party, grow our ranks, and win elections. We must compete in every state and every region building relationships with communities we havent before. In fact, i think we should just stop talking about reaching out and start working on welcoming in. Reaching out, welcoming in, hands touching hands. Apparently reince has been spending the last few months in a karaoke performing neil diamond, but louisiana governor bobby jindal was a bit less touchyfeely about the prospects for the party. Weve got to stop being the stupid party. And im serious. Its time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults. Its no secret we had a number of republicans that damaged the brand in year with offensive and bizarre comments. Im here to say weve had enough of that. So Governor Jindal wants to shred his im with stupidt shirt, and he doesnt want to trade it for any of that big business bling either. We must quit big. We are not the party of big business, big banks, big wall street bailouts, big corporate loopholes or big anything. We must not be the party that simply protects the wellooff s they can keep their toys . Do you remember mitt and ann romney . In a change of their schedule for selects drapes for their car elevator, they were celebrated in washington today. Not by an inauguration as theyd hoped, but by a luncheon with top fundraisers, including bill marriott. Yes, the whole gang got back together with romneys former running mate paul ryan apparently also in attendance. Imagine, right now we could all be crawling over the controversy of romneys own lip syncing of america the beautiful and preparing for ted nugent to be nominated as secretary of state. Lets get right to our panel now in washington is dana milbank, Political Columnist for the Washington Post, and in Philadelphia Lehigh UniversityProfessor James peterson, a contributor to thegrio. Com. Good afternoon to both of you. Professor peterson, as the president was busy today working on immigration overhaul, the gop was trying very hard to stop being the stupid party, to stop being the big bucks party. All the while reelecting their leadership and celebrating a losing candidate with a fancy lunch. So whats wrong with that picture . I mean, once again i think theyve got this all wrong. I mean, first of all, msnbcs own Michael Steele outperformed Reince Priebus in a lot of different ways when he was chairman of the party. So its interesting reince got another crack at it after all the losses they sustained over the course of this election season. But they just have it all mixed up. They think they need to change their messaging. Their messaging was very, very clear during the election season. Their message to the 47 , their message in support of the 1 , their message to women and how they want to qualify rape. Their message to latinos and i am grant populations about putting up fences and not wanting folks to immigrate and their message to black folk with food Stamp President comments and all the ways they wanted to limb voting for people of color. They were clear on their messaging. I think they have to think about how do they change their ideological constructions. You have just buried them, sir. Dana, in his speech today Reince Priebus said a blue state is not a permanent diagnosis. And there is a plan for that, an Electoral College shakeup. In, lets see, virginia, michigan, ohio, pennsylvania. Now, even virginias governor has said he opposes it, but why do you suppose those states would be targeted . I cant imagine why. Help viewers understand why that might be. Its interesting that the party is saying that the leaders are saying their problem has been messaging. The real problem has been democracy. People arent voting for them. They have come up with a rather brilliant solution and thats to take the people out of the process. In these states, these very important swing states, theyre finding a way basically to deliver these states to republican president ial candidates dana, theyre finding a way to rig the process. Thats what theyre finding a way to do. If theyre able to do this in virginia, for example, mitt romney got 47 of the vote, but under this system that theyre planning to put in place, he would have gotten 70 of the electoral vote there. This is basically a coup by gerrymandering. The idea is and this is how the republicans have been able to keep the house of representatives, for example, even though they lost by a sizable amount the popular vote going to house candidates. They want to do the same thing in the president ial race, so the presidency is no longer affected by the way actual voters vote in an election. So its a most novel strategy. One would think in the long run this wont work and it probably wont even become the law in places like virginia and ohio. But professor peterson, on the one hand we have the reelected chair saying he wants to reach out. He wants to welcome everyone, and on the other hand republicans are seeking to rig the system. I mean, who is being honest here . Which side of the party are we supposed to believe . Well, listen, the move to sort of establish this federal gerrymandering, one, should open the american populaces eyes to the way in which the states have been gerrymandered, but, two, it smacks of the same kind of sin stesh strategy and the political moves the republicans have been making recently, and i think we have to trust that because thats indicative of the kind of behavior theyve engaged in in the past. They do have to stop talking about reaching out and actually reach out, right . What they really need, and i dont know if there are any strategists or consultants who can do this for them, they need some cultural competence in their party. They need to understand how the culture of the people operate in these shifting demographic times and without those sort of core shifts and core sort of instruction for their party, i think theyre kind of doomed to sort of live in this world where the fringe folk and the vocal minority in the party dictate and dominate the kind of policies, legislation theyre interested in, and the kind of messaging they communicate to the american people. Dana, to that point, your column this coming sunday, is a story about paul ryans epic us a tear plan to balance the budget not no 30 years, but 10 years. Take a listen to this. We know you won the president ial election, but you made your party into one of the most outrageous government dependent parties that weve ever seen in modern time. You have delivered less and less from our economy, particularly for hispanics and africanamericans. Dana, the stock market is at a fivetime high a fiveyear high. Unemployment is at a fiveyear low. He says on the one hand he wants to reach out. You can see the shares in the dow jones right now. What is this man talking about . Please, translate it because im not intelligent enough to understand it. There is apparently a bit of a mixed message occurring at the rnc winter meeting. In the very brain of the chairman. I think bobby jindal had a point where he said we need to stop being the party of austerity. We need to stop saying how good we can be at shrinking and cutting government. That is not a winning message. Hes absolutely right about that. And then you have the party here in washington doing exactly what he said not to do, and you have paul ryan coming forward and saying, yes, im going to we lost the election so im actually going to double down on this. Im going to cut 40 of the federal government out over the next ten years because thats exactly what the people want to hear and if they dont like it, well arrange the Electoral College so well win anyway. Professor . It doesnt make demographic sense. We know the numbers. We know that the red states, and there are a lot of poor white people as well, there are a lot of older white people as well. It just doesnt make sense to try to divide the country in this way. Because of the economic downturn this country took under a republican president , were still in recovery, and thats why the federal government has to intervene through medicare and social security. The safety net has to be strengthened but its not just strengthened for black and latinos. Look at the map of your own states. Understand the demographics. Look at the sort of federal sort of tradeoff with the red states in this country and youll understand that youve got to speak to your own constituents to try to say its black and latino folk who are the beneficiaries of federal spend something not only inaccurate but its a miscal clition in terms of understanding the quaeti constituency of the Republican Party. Lindsey graham said the republicans arent generating enough angry white guys to stay in power. It will describe them as fr freeloade freeloaders. Thats not going to work. I think its fair to say the republicans have sort of cornered the market on the angry white guy vote. Theres not a whole lot more upside they can have there. And thats the issue here is if you look at where demographics are going, its latinos are going to be the dominant force in politics here and the angry white guy, particularly the angry southern white guy, is becoming a shrinking piece of that. You see the instinct going on right now is to protect that through this gerrymandering, through this changing of the rules and the Electoral College. The idea is to sustain the advantage the republicans for as long as possible but ultimately theyre just rearranging the deck chairs here if theyre not keeping up with where the country is going. Ultimately they can only defy gravity for so long. Dana milbank, Professor James peterson, thank you so much. Next, perhaps the most preposterous comments on a womans body you have ever heard. Stay with us. So as you can see, geicos Customer Satisfaction is at 97 . Mmmm tasty. And cut very good. People are always asking me how we make these geico adverts. So were taking you behind the scenes. This coffee cup, for example, is computer animated. Its not real. Country is going. Ranimated coffee tastes dreadful. Geico. 15 minutes could save you 15 or more on car insurance. Country is going. Country is going. [ breathes deeply, wind blows ] [ male announcer ] halls. Let the cool in. [ bop ] [ bop ] [ bop ] you can do that all you want, i dont like v8 juice. [ male announcer ] how about v8 vfusion. A full serving of vegetables, a full serving of fruit. But what you taste is the fruit. So even you. Couldve had a v8. Using Cloud Computing and mobile technology, verizon innovators have developed a projective display for firefighters. Allowing them to see through anything. Because the worlds Biggest Challenges deserve even bigger solutions. Powerful answers. Verizon. I have a cold, and i took nyquil, but im still stubbed up. [ male announcer ] truth is, nyquil doesnt unstuff your nose. What . [ male announcer ] it doesnt have a decongestant. No way. [ male announcer ] sorry. Alkaseltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast acting decongestant to relieve your stuffy nose. [ sighs ] thanks [ male announcer ] youre welcome. Thats the cold truth [ male announcer ] alkaseltzer plus. Oh what a relief it is [ male announcer ] to learn more about the cold truth and save 1 visit alkaseltzer on facebook. If you have any new ideas on how to resuscitate the grand old party, republicans gathered in charlotte would love to hear from you because right now this is what theyve got. A republican legislator in new mexico who has proposed a law that would jail any woman who has an abortion after becoming pregnant during a Sexual Assault. The reason, well, she says that would be tampering with evidence. Joining us now, as speechless as myself, hopefully not, ari melber, correspondent for the nation and my colleague chrkryl ball. They have no ideas on jobs, nothing to say about fixing immigration, but they want to criminalize abortion. Are they legislating themselves into history as it were, into the backside of history . So farther, and this measure doesnt stand alone. You know, republicans in congress have also introduced legislation to defund planned parenthood, an organization that provides all sorts of services. Abortion being the least of them. To women across the country. And i think what theyve gotten used to is an environment where they could get away with these things and no one would really make note but that has changed. 2011 was a bad year, a landmark year in a bad way in that we saw the largest number of restrictions on womens reproductive rights pass in state legislatures across the country and the response to that has been a backlash and a lot more attention paid to the type of legislation like what youre talking about here. So theyre not going to be able to get away with it anymore. Ari, youre a lawyer. I mean, what are these people suggesting . That somehow the woman who has already been the victim of a Sexual Assault should keep the child as evidence of the original crime . Well, sb 206, this bill, is basically trying to read in an attack on abortion into the laws of evidence and preserving or tampering with evidence which can be a heavily restricted in the criminal context. I dont think the law is the legislation here is as bad as people said. It refers to an intent to destroy, quote, evidence of the crime. All that really means is if someone was a perpetrator in a rape and then sought to compel or facilitate, thats the language in the bill, compel for facilitate an abortion, that would be an extra charge against them. So i dont think contrary so some of the criticism, my reading of the law is not na this targets victims. The problem here is to echo what crystal said, the problem is this constant, sneaky and antifemale attempt to make everything about restricting what is under the law a constitutional right. So my point here is not that this is good law. I would never vote for Something Like this if i was in the new mexico legislature. It reads so awkwardly because its not an area that should have anything to do with the right to make those decisions yurds as a woman. Okay. Well, the gop has had a number of different ideas put forward recently, and here we have another one from bobby jindal who describes how he would reduce government bureaucracy. We would have about a fourth of the buildings we have in washington, half of the government workers weve got in washington. We would replace most of its bureaucracy with a handful of good websites. Wed replace government with a handful of good websites. What is that man talking about . Thats a governor. He should be delighted then to know that the president that government workers have decreased by 600,000 under this president. He should be delighted by that. I mean, its an absurd proposition, and thats not to say that our bureaucracy is perfect, but they love to make government bureaucrats these evil do nothings, when, in fact, they provide Vital Services to the country. Now, do you want to change the system so that theres more incentives to perform better, streamline efficiencies . Sure. But the idea youre going to wipe out, you know, the department of agricultural and just replace it with a website is patently absurd. Ari, the gop does have a savior in the form of Newt Gingrich, and he has said that the party should not be angrily persistent nor repressively persistent, but happily persistent. Now that sounds to me like good advice if youre covering with Something Like constipation, but the idea that that is the way forward . Thats the Newt Gingrich idea, happy persistence. Look, theres a long tradition of the happy warrior in american politics, but you have to be happily fighting for something that is clear, that is just, that is right, that people think will broadly improve their lives. And i think the problem that youve are a take lated and you made a good point in the first segment i want to underscore is this idea that the republican are looking to come up with something to sell the public after losing this election while also looking to get the public out of the voting process for them, right . This is fundamental. Now, it sounds im just attacking them. No, you hit on something very fundamentally, something people understand because they remember it in all the different ways that there was voter disenfranchisement. We discussed it repeatedly. They are not getting past it yet, and its going to be a long time coming. I think the core problem here is the solutions that they have offered, whether it is something silly like, yes, well replace police with websites, okay, well replace Public Workers and teachers with websites, or the grand victories they have had that didnt work out. Lets remember fiscal cliff, cutting government as krystal was pointing out, more than we already have, was something republicans had to get up and say we didnt mean it, we dont want it, its too fast, its bad for the economy. That panic we had was actually a failing of the core ideological promise they made in november. And to that point on economics, krystal, paul ryan to the wall street journal says, the electorate did not reject our principles at the election. Okay. What did the electorate say then . They didnt like the way he looked . They didnt believe his marathon lies. They didnt like the obama phone they were given and the gifts they got from the president. What is this man talking about . Paul ryan did say things like urban voters. He has that same view that mitt romney does about