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Thirteen social conservatives, representing various influential groups, wrote Priebus ahead of the RNC's quarterly meeting this week in Los Angeles to sternly rebuke the conclusions of a post-election report that advised Republican elected officials to adopt a softer tone toward social issues.

"We respectfully warn GOP Leadership that an abandonment of its principles will necessarily result in the abandonment of our constituents to their support," concludes the letter, which was obtained by and independently verified by NBC News in advance of the meeting this week.

The letter further asks GOP committeemen to pass a resolution at their meeting this week re-affirming the party's 2012 national platform, which includes language calling for bans on abortion and same-sex marriage

The gaping wound in the middle of the Republican party is opening wider and wider. Where will these "constituents" go?

More ironically, the letter claims the religious community has never, ever been mean to gays.

The conservatives additionally expressed their anger at what they said was an insinuation that they had treated gays and lesbians unkindly.

"The fact that the party is strongly committed to traditional marriage has not prevented their involvement through GOProud or Log Cabin Republicans," they wrote. "We deeply resent the insinuation that we have treated homosexuals unkindly personally."

They can resent it all they want, but a quick visit to RightWingWatch says otherwise. This group may not have been a signatory, but I guarantee you they align with those who did sign. It's not mean at all to say that gays on TV will bring down the hard, wrathful hand of God on the country. Not in the least. Gary Bauer's group is a signatory, though I'm sure they don't think there's anything mean about suggesting that supporting gay rights is waging "cultural jihad" on the country. Yeah, no meanness there.

Those were just two examples from today. I don't really want to imagine what they think unkindness is if they imagine hateful remarks like that to be somehow "kind."

(Sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas")

On the first day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Obama's born in another country.

On the second day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the third day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the fourth day of Christmas
Republicans told me
We don't torture
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the fifth day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Tax cuts more revenues bring
We don't torture
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the sixth day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Half the people no taxes paying
Tax cuts more revenues bring
We don't torture
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the seventh day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Government Reagan was trimming
Half the people no taxes paying
Tax cuts more revenues bring
We don't torture
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

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Michigan Republicans, desperate for something -- anything -- to make themselves look good, have now resorted to bullying Democratic legislators in order to steal their legislative proposals.

Eclectablog:

But even Republicans don’t think that EVERY idea that Democrats have is a bad one. It’s just not something they want the rest of Michigan to believe. So, in order to deny Democrats any legislative victories in the current session, Republicans have begun using an approach that I haven’t heard of before: introducing legislation that is identical to a bill that was introduced by a Democrat and then supporting that legislation instead.

Oh, I see. In some circles which are not legislative, we might call that plagiarism. Then again, when you're a legislator used to having all of your legislation written by ALEC, I suppose it's not a far stretch to reach across the aisle and swipe whatever might make you look good. Their tactics are downright thuggish, as usual. After a freshman Democrat introduced legislation to give returning veterans resident status for college tuition, this happened:

It’s a great idea. With his background as a two-time Iraqi veteran with the Marine Corp, Knezek knows a little bit about the challenges that face returning vets. In fact, Knezek told me that he had a number of Republicans approach him after he introduced HJR L on February 28th to tell him they thought it was a great piece of legislation. Then, in early March, Republican State Rep. Jim Stamas (R-Midland) came to him and told him he’d have to pull HJR L.

“Why?” asked Knezek.

“Because I’m taking it,” Stamas told the dumbfounded freshman lawmaker.

And take it he did. Just a week after Knezek had introduced HJR L, Stamas introduced House Joint Resolution N (pdf). You might think that with such a blatant theft Stamas would have added his own spin to the resolution. You would be wrong. HJR L and HJR N are identical, word-for-word.

Well, then. Knezek was about as generous as he could be about it, saying he was glad to see it passed even if it wasn't his bill. I suppose that's true, but someone ought to put the bully in the corner.

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When is scholarship not scholarship? When it's not carefully reviewed for every aspect, including the integrity of the underlying data used to draw conclusions.

For several years now, we've been hearing conservatives around the world insist austerity is the road back to prosperity -- because the smart guys in the think tanks say so. Now it turns out those smart guys aren't as smart as they thought.

Republicans based their austerity claims on a study known as Reinhart-Rogoff, which drew the conclusion that debt exceeding 90 percent of GDP leads to economic slowdowns. Other researchers sought to challenge the conclusions and were given access to Reinhart-Rogoff's raw data, contained in spreadsheets.

Their conclusions:

In a new paper, "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst successfully replicate the results. After trying to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results and failing, they reached out to Reinhart and Rogoff and they were willing to share their data spreadhseet. This allowed Herndon et al. to see how how Reinhart and Rogoff's data was constructed.

They find that three main issues stand out. First, Reinhart and Rogoff selectively exclude years of high debt and average growth. Second, they use a debatable method to weight the countries. Third, there also appears to be a coding error that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries. All three bias in favor of their result, and without them you don't get their controversial result.

The coding error might be forgivable, but not when combined with the other two factors, and especially not when the combination of the three yields a false result.

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Last fall, voters across North Carolina made their choices at the ballot box. In the next general election we will see whether they still like those they chose.

I recently read a post from state Sen. Thom Goolsby, R-New Hanover. He explains why he and Sen. Buck Newton, R-Wilson, introduced a bill taking away our choice to vote a straight ticket. Republicans like more choice in theory. Because freedom. But they insist on taking away this choice. Plus a few others.

See, straight-ticket voting indicates "voter laziness," says Goolsby. Meaning, 56 percent of North Carolina's straight-ticket voters choose the other party, and that's just wrong, as he sees it.

Or "You're doing it all wrong, son," as Foghorn Leghorn might see it. "Now a smart, I say, a smart voter...."

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Credit: SPLC

Via ThinkProgress:

The real surprise came almost accidentally, when studying the content of the tweets members of the dataset sent out, with a substantial amount of it linked to the conservative movement in the United States and the Republican Party. Among the most popular hashtags used by those included in the dataset included “#tcot,” or top conservatives on Twitter; “#teaparty,” and “#gop.” The study also looked at the links these users sent out, categorized into mainstream, content-neutral, alternative, and extremist categories. More than half of the alternative links these users sent out were also to conservative websites, such as World Net Daily and Brietbart.com.

The authors of the study determined that the usage seemed to be “driven more by white nationalists feeling an affinity for conservatism than by conservatives feeling an affinity for white nationalism.” They were also quick to note that the data were pulled during a period of time surrounding the Republican National Convention, potentially providing a boost in references to the GOP. However, a comparison group — composed of left-wing anarchists — did not yield similar results linking them to progressive ideals or the Democratic Party.

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I'm guessing that Paul Ryan thinks those manly biceps are just going to dazzle the media so much that they'll just glide right over the most truthful Freudian slip to ever cross those PX90-lovin' lips:

"This is something we will not give up on because we are not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people."

There you go, people. When a politician tells you what he is, believe him.

Who knew that seeming double-centenerian Pete Domenici was such a player? None of us, it turns out, until the former longtime Senator of New Mexico recently admitted to an extra-marital affair with a colleague's [Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada] daughter, which produced a now-thirty-something son.

Domenici is certainly not the first politician to suffer from Strom Thurmond Disease. You may remember the late Senator Thurmond, he of the presidential campaign in 1948 based on the segregation of the races - something he couldn't personally accomplish with the hired help in his own household (let's call it an Early Schwarzenegger). Just two weeks ago, at the age of 87, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, his bi-racial child who could not acknowledge her father publicly until his death in 2003, passed away herself. Just another sad story of conservative hypocrisy, and in Thurmond's case, one of many dalliances with women not his wife for the "family values"-spouting, Lost-Cause romantic.

This is not to say this kind of thing doesn't happen on the Democratic/liberal side. (I have two words for you. John and Edwards.) Yet, the difference is that like most Republicans, Domenici was all too concerned what was going on in our private lives if we were gay, a woman, or a President being impeached in the 1990s over an affair. He was a moral exemplar, you see, who was so pristine and pure you'd think he brought the Ten Commandments down from the mountain. He could deign to lecture us all, including then President Bill Clinton.

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In Pennsylvania, ThinkProgress warns that the latest version of Republicans' plan to rig the electoral college has been introduced into the state Senate:

Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) was one of the earliest supporters of rigging the Electoral College, backing a plan to do so as early as 2011. Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi was one of the leading supporters of election-rigging the and late this week, he — along with a dozen other co-sponsors — introduced a new plan to rig the Electoral College votes in his blue state of Pennsylvania. Under this legislation, a large chunk of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes would be awarded to the Republican candidate even though Pennsylvania is a solid blue state that has supported the Democratic candidate for president in every election since 1992.

Meanwhile, MSNBC is reporting that Michigan Republicans are 100 percent behind a similar effort there:

The electoral college rigging scheme that drew criticism of cheating and was disavowed by many prominent Republicans now has the official backing of more than 1,300 Michigan Republicans.

According to the Detroit Free-Press, at the GOP party convention in Lansing this weekend more than 90% of Republicans voted in favor of a resolution to change the electoral vote distribution process from winner-take-all to one in which 14 of the state’s votes went to the winner in each congressional district. The final two votes would go to the state’s overall winner.

As we reported earlier this year, that planwould have given Mitt Romney 9 of the states 16 electoral votes, despite the fact that he lost the state by 9%.

But not all Republicans are on board with the plan. Governor Rick Snyder has said it’s ”not the appropriate time” to discuss a plan to change the electoral college, saying he’d prefer a bipartisan conversation held closer to a census.

Yes, well. Governor Snyder also said he wouldn't ram through a right-to-work bill in Michigan too, and after voters rejected right-to-work laws in that state, Snyder signed one into law anyway. I wouldn't take his concern over timing very seriously at all.

This isn't over. They're just operating in the shadows right now.

I don't know how to break it to Rand Paul, but the fact that he's even giving a competing response to Marco Rubio's State of the Union rebuttal for Republicans is a clear indication of the division within the Republican party between the Birch faction and the pretend-moderate faction. This interview with Candy Crowley is almost comical, particularly with regard to Paul's insistence that he won't be divisive simply because he's giving a separate response.

"I see it as an extra response. I don't see it as necessarily divisive," Paul told chief political correspondent Candy Crowley on the CNN program "State of the Union."

"I won't say anything on there that necessarily is like, 'Marco Rubio is wrong,'" Paul continued. "He and I don't always agree, but this isn't about he and I. This is about the Tea Party, which is a grass-roots movement, a real movement, with millions of Americans that still are concerned about some of the deal-making that goes on in Washington."

Baby Paul has been asked to give his response by the Tea Party Express. The Tea Party Express is just as mainstream Republican as the RNC is, except that it caters to the Birch Society side of the GOP. There's nothing independent about them. Sal Russo, who has long-standing ties back to the Howard Jarvis anti-tax, anti-immigrant, pro-corporate Ross Perot contingent, is their lobbyist/leader. Other than a deeper hate toward brown people than mainstream Republicans, there's just not that much daylight between them.

Either Baby Paul has been asked to give his response in the hope of reigniting some of the 2010 fire now for 2014, or else he's been chosen to give the point of view of those who want to deport every undocumented immigrant and send prison inmates out to pick the crops.

Whichever it is, it highlights a division in the party simply by virtue of the desire to put him out there as the spokesman for the tainted Tea Party brand. I'm sure Paul's pals at Stormfront.org will cheer him on, at least.

Go for it, Rand. You and 8 percent of the country are simpatico. That should be a great runup to 2014, pal.