“I’ll be honest here. In the past two years, we’ve done a pretty lousy job of connecting in the Latino community," Priebus said, speaking at an event in Chicago for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the Chicago Tribune reports. "We’ve missed out on opportunities to build better relationships. But that’s going to change."

“I didn’t come here to convert you,” he added. “I hope that it’s clear that we want to earn your trust and your vote.”

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The report, according to Politico's summary, covers much of the same ground as the Reince Priebus-ordered RNC report on the troubles of the Republican Party released earlier this year. Politico sums up the findings with the following bullet points:

Gay marriage: “On the ‘open-minded’ issue … [w]e will face serious difficulty so long as the issue of gay marriage remains on the table.”

Hispanics: “Latino voters … tend to think the GOP couldn’t care less about them.”

Perception of the party’s economic stance: “We’ve become the party that will pat you on your back when you make it, but won’t offer you a hand to help you get there.”

Big reason for the image problem: The “outrageous statements made by errant Republican voices.”

Words that up-for-grabs voters associate with the GOP: “The responses were brutal: closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.”

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It's because Obama is black, and "the American people are not going to tolerate the first black president being removed from office," according to Limbaugh.

h/t Media Matters

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“We have to be persistent but patient,” Priebus told Politico. “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we present ourselves to the American people as intelligent, we’re going to be in a great place as far as showing that this administration is not transparent, is obsessed with power and hates dissent. But you don’t call for impeachment until you have evidence.”

Republicans like Sen. Jim Inhofe, Okla., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah, have argued that the President could be impeached over the State Department's handling of the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya — not to mention the slew of Republicans who have invoked Watergate when discussing the IRS scandal.

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"It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today," Pantoja wrote in a letter to the Florida Nation. "I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them."

Pantoja was referencing the recent Heritage Foundation study on Congress' immigration reform legislation, which was written by Jason Richwine, who also once wrote: "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against."

"Studies geared towards making – human beings – viewed as less because of their immigrant status to outright unacceptable claims, are at the center of the immigration debate," Pantoja wrote.

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The Hill reports that the RNC is challenging how much an individual can donate in the course of a two-year election cycle:

Individual donors cannot donate more than $74,600 to political committees, such as the RNC, in a two-year period. Contributions to individual candidates are capped at $48,600, meaning one donor could only give the maximum donation to nine candidates per cycle.

The RNC said in its brief that the court should strike down aggregate limits because they infringe on donors' First Amendment rights but don't serve an appropriate and “narrowly tailored” government interest.

The Court is scheduled to take up campaign finance limits in its next term, which starts in October.

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Inside the conservative movement, the Tea Party has displaced evangelical activists as the dynamic force, pushing economic issues ahead of social ones, while voters affirmed their support for gay rights and punished candidates with restrictionist views on abortion in 2012. In their "autopsy report," the Republican National Committee essentially suggested abandoning social conservatives -- despite leaning on them heavily just a few years ago to elect and reelect George W. Bush -- and even the movement conservatives at CPAC had little appetite for the Christian-right causes of yore.

Needless to say, social conservatives who are not happy about this state of affairs are lashing out against their friends, threatening to leave the GOP if it doesn't join them on the wrong side of history.

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AAN's Pete Meachum told the Examiner that Cater America head Rob Jennings said, "See what it would take to get Gaga instead of Dolly."

From the Examiner:

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"We all want to make America strong economically and militarily and every other way but you can't do that if you're not in office," he told The Hill. "We've got a socialist in office right now — how's that working for us?"

When pressed on his choice of words, Barbour said: "I don't care. I mean, look, I think he's a socialist. I'm not saying he doesn't love our country," he said. "No, I don't care."

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From the National Review Online:

“I think [the RNC] should pretty much ignore him,” says Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime conservative activist, in an interview with National Review Online. “I think he has made a mistake, and he probably won’t get reelected.”

Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, says the party has to be careful. “If the Republican party tries to retreat from being a pro-marriage, pro-family party, the big tent is going to become a pup tent very fast,” he says. “I am concerned that some in the party are going wobbly on this issue.”

Brian Brown, of the National Organization for Marriage, told NRO that Portman will now likely get a challenger in the primary. “This is a critical issue, and to act like it’s just no big deal is just wrong."

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The report says "we have to engage" minority voters "and show our sincerity.” A first test of that strategy approached them almost instantly, with President Obama’s nomination today of Tom Perez to serve as labor secretary. And so far, they don't seem to be implementing it very deftly.

Perez, who is currently the head of the Department of Justice’ Civil Rights Division, has had his name dragged through the mud over factually inaccurate, race-baiting charges of impropriety. Some conservatives claim that Perez, a Latino working under the first black president and first black attorney general in history, dismissed a case against a handful of New Black Panther activists in some kind gesture of racial solidarity.

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"Question about CPAC last week, where a panel on African-American voters dissolved into a shouting match with at least one activist saying that -- talking about voters being systematically disenfranchised. How, given that sort of backdrop in the party, do you plan to overcome those challenges in your role at the RNC?" said National Press Club president Angela Greiling Keane, reading from a written question, during a press conference with Priebus at the National Press Club.

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"The Republicans are just getting totally bamboozled right now. And they are entirely lacking in confidence. Which is what happens to every political party after an election in which they think they got shellacked," the influential conservative radio host told his listeners this morning. "They think they got landslided, but they didn't."

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But Republicans have one very big problem when it comes to recruiting the talent needed to modernize the party's digital infrastructure: its hostility towards gay people.

That's according to Liz Mair, who was the RNC's online communications director in 2008 before leaving to start her own political consulting firm. Since then, she's worked with Carly Fiorina on her 2010 California Senate bid, with Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign, and with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s successful reelection effort after a recall attempt last year.

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The report, which analyzed the GOP's losses in the 2012 elections, said that many of those surveyed described the party as "narrow minded" and a party of "stuff old men."

"Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country," the report says. "When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us."

The report recommends that the GOP "stop talking to itself" and that "If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them, and show our sincerity." On social issues, the RNC concludes that Republicans need to be more "inclusive and welcoming."

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From earlier:

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said that Karl Rove's plan to target far-right conservatives in the primaries, like potential Iowa Senate candidate Rep. Steve King, is "a fool's game because you can’t actually predict some of the things that go on.”

“Listen, I don’t think our platform is the issue,” Priebus said, Radio Iowa reports. “I think a lot of times it’s some of these biologically stupid things that people say, you know, that I believe caused a lot of the problems.”

He continued: "Personally, as an RNC [Chair], I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe the party should pick winners and losers in primaries and I think it’s, historically, if you look at it, it’s a bit of a fool’s game because you can’t actually predict some of the things that go on.”

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The RNC raised $6.9 million in January and ended the month with $7.1 million in cash — along with no debt.

The Democratic National Committee brought in $4.3 million in January and ended the month with $4.7 million in cash.

But the DNC is carrying a large debt of $20.7 million, down slightly from the end of the year. Democrats racked up the debt while helping President Barack Obama hold onto the White House.

Party committees filed monthly financial reports Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.

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Ahead of the presidential inauguration in Washington Monday, an NSSE that will draw 3,000 law enforcement officers and some 13,000 military troops to the area, the National Lawyers Guild has released  a report based on last year's Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., and Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., highlighting First and Fourth Amendment violations imported with this sort of event policing. The report notes:

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The justices did not comment Monday in rejecting an appeal of lower court decisions that left the order in place at least until 2017.

The order stems from a lawsuit filed by Democrats in New Jersey in 1981 that objected to a "ballot security" program the RNC ran in minority neighborhoods.

Republicans said the order hampers efforts to combat voter fraud, but U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise said voter intimidation remains a threat and preventing it outweighs the potential danger of fraud.

The court action is unrelated to legal challenges to Republican-inspired voter identification laws in the 2012 campaign.

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