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QOTD from Marco Rubio on this Sunday's Meet the Press:

And I think the best way to do that is for the Republican Party to prove, as I think we can, that we are the party of upward mobility. We are not the party of the people who have made it. Certainly we don't begrudge people who have made it. We celebrate what they've done. And in America, we've always celebrated success.

But we are the party that stands for the people who are trying to make it, the people who are trying to start a business out of the spare bedroom of their home, who are trying to give their kids a better life.

Riiiigggghhht. I don't think you could say the majority of those in the Congress other than the Progressive Caucus in the House and a few I could count on one hand in the Senate are looking out for most of us these days, but Republicans have shown by their actions for a long time now just who they represent, and it's definitely those "who have made it" -- or in other words, the 1 percent.

Full transcript below the fold.

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It looks like the Anchor Baby isn't too happy with Republicans like Lindsey Graham for working with Senate Democrats on the immigration bill he was touting over the weekend. Michelle Malkin and her ilk seem determined to make sure that the GOP ends up as popular with Hispanic voters as they are with African Americans right now.

From the Fox News Insider site: Michelle Malkin Calls Out Republicans for Supporting “Shamnesty” Immigration Bill:

On Your World this afternoon, Michelle Malkin called out “deluded” Republicans for joining with Democrats to craft legislation that she equates to amnesty for illegal immigrants already in the country.

“There are many self-deluded Republicans who feel that this kind of ‘shamnesty’ is a salvation for a party that is in shambles. [...] At the same time that they are talking out of one side of their mouth to grassroots conservatives and people of all political persuasions who believe that it is the government’s constitutionally-mandated role to secure the borders,” said Malkin, referring to a TownHall.com report indicating that border crossings are rapidly increasing since talks on an immigration deal began recently.

Good luck with that "minority outreach" program of yours, Republicans!

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I don't know about anyone else, but I think one of the last people I want to hear from when it comes to Don Young's remark about his dad's "50-60 wetbacks" and how this is going to harm the Republicans and their joke of a "minority outreach program" is former Santorum communications director, Hogan Gidley.

Rather than being run out of town on a rail for inflicting the likes of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum on the rest of the country, MSNBC has chosen to make this guy a regular on many of their daytime shows, and Thomas Roberts' in particular. So here we are with a man who helped bring us Mr. Man-on-dog, I don't want to make "blah people's lives better," Obama's going to bow to more Muslims, being asked for his sage advice now on how Republicans can now connect with minority voters.

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Reince Priebus and the RNC's recent efforts to work on the GOP's messaging and their ridiculous minority outreach program were mocked roundly on this Tuesday evening's The Daily Show by host Jon Stewart, who was, to put it mildly, not impressed with their post-election plan:

“Holy shit, let me break this strategy down, if I may,” Stewart said after running a clip of RNC Chair Reince Priebus discussing the report. “Let me break this strategy down. After pretending minorities didn’t exist proved a loser, the Republican Party has decided to physically go into these areas and engage, person to person, or, as that is known on the streets, talking. But of course, as the saying goes talk is not cheap.”

That’s where the additional paid staff come in.

“So there you go,” Stewart said. “You’re going to go into minority neighborhoods, do a little market research, then send paid spokespeople back into the minority communities with a new retargeted message. Hey, it worked for Kool cigarettes, why not, why not for another organization that has seemed indifferent to the overall health of minorities?”

Stewart followed up with some highlights from this year's CPAC 2013 and after showing the audience some of The Donald, the Wasilla Snowbilly and their new "rising star" and Fox favorite Ben Carson's speeches, wished the Republicans "good luck in 2020."

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After the attacks we saw from the right on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the way that their treatment of Latinos really damaged Republicans in the last election, Rachel Maddow wondered if Reince Priebus and the RNC's new minority outreach program was going to work to convince Latinos to vote for them.

As she noted, if what we saw in reaction to the nomination of Thomas Perez for Labor Secretary from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin or Rand Paul and his incorrect assumptions about Latino voters are any indication, it's probably not going to go very well for them.

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During a discussion about RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and his latest effort to try to "fix" the GOP and his so-called "minority outreach initiative," which, as we already discussed here, looks like it's headed to be a massive flop, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough decided he'd give old Reince a hand with that minority outreach program by badgering guest Eugene Robinson and demanding he name "the top three issues that make that sort of outreach difficult for Republicans."

Note to Joe Scarborough -- if you want to help out with reaching out to African-Americans, here's a few things you could do. One, don't do it while badgering one of your African-American guests to rattle off a list while you brow beat them and presume that they would want to speak for every other African-American in the country. And don't pretend you don't know full well what the real answers to your questions are already.

Here's a hint on why the Republicans lost the majority of the African-American vote: The New Deal and the Civil Rights Act. And then we there's the Southern Strategy and demonizing and fearmongering to win elections. And to this day you can throw in voter disenfranchisement, these White Supremacist groups and militias cropping up everywhere, the birther movement, the overt racism we saw come from these TeaBirchers and the fact that the Republican party looks like they've completely lost their minds since the election of the first black president.

I'll leave it at that but the list is miles long when it comes to what Republicans have done to slowly disenfranchise the majority of the electorate other than old white men. Good luck with that outreach program Reince. You're going to need it.

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After pointing out that Republicans are no longer having success running on issues like inner city crime and opining over New York's Time Square becoming "a Disney-fied, bubble gum, wimp company" where "the worst that could happen is one of those giant M&M's tries to flash you his peanuts," Colbert opined over the fact that
this disturbing lack of violence isn't just a problem for our cities" but for the Republican party as well.

As Colbert noted, in this last election Republicans lost the blacks, the women, young voters, Latinos by 44 percent and "even more surprising, they failed to get 100 percent of the white male vote." Colbert had a suggestion for a new wedge issues if Republicans want to turn the voter tide back in their favor -- white male patriarchy.

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While quite a few Republicans are waking up to the fact that maybe it's not such a good idea to insult huge swaths of the voting public as Mitt Romney did when he made his remarks about President Obama winning the election because he gave "gifts" to minorities, women and young voters, it seems The Blaze's Will Cain hasn't gotten the message yet either.

This Sunday evening on CNN during Don Lemon's show, Cain appeared with regular LZ Granderson, and after Lemon played recordings of Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour all condemning Romney's remarks, both men were stunned when Cain decided to come to Romney's defense.

And as Granderson rightfully pointed out during the interview, besides being extremely insulting, Romney's remarks weren't even accurate, regardless of Cain's weak defense of them here. Cutting the middle man out of the student loan program, making sure women have affordable access to contraceptives, allowing people to stay on their parents' insurance plans, and allowing children who were brought to the United States to stay here instead of being deported are not "gifts." They're good policy.

If Cain wants to make sure that the Republican party remains the party of hateful old white men and help his buddy Willard make sure no one else ever wants to vote for them again, just keep talking buddy.

h/t Dave

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I'm sure we're going to see more of this over at Fox as the evening goes on this election night. Bill O'Reilly was already getting the excuses ready if Romney loses the election -- O'Reilly already blaming a potential Romney loss on Hurricane Sandy:

With results still rolling in, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is already prepping to blame a Mitt Romney loss on Hurricane Sandy, Obama’s visibility in the wake of the storm, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s (R) praise of the President:

O’REILLY: I did pick up two things. On the exit polling, Hurricane Sandy was prominent in the exit polling. And that is really interesting. Because it just impacted a bunch of Northeast states who would vote for Barack Obama but the country was so locked in on this fierce storm. Americans like storms. And they were — and there was Chris Christie and president Obama walking down the beach, you know, with a little ‘Seth in the Moon Glow’ music behind him and it just wiped the Governor’s campaign off the map. For five days. Five days Mitt Romney disappeared from the national debate and from the media headline.

And what would a night on Fox be without Bill-O managing to get in a little race baiting as well -- O’Reilly: Minorities and women voting Obama because they ‘want stuff’:

O’Reilly went on to predict that Romney would lose the election if he lost Ohio.

“How do you think we got to that point?” host Megyn Kelly wondered.

“Because it’s a changing country,” O’Reilly insisted. “The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff, they want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama.”

“The white establishment is now the minority,” he added. “And the voters — many of them — feel that this economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You’re going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama, overwhelming black vote for President Obama and women will probably break President Obama’s way.”

“People feel that they are entitled to things. And which candidate between the two is going to give them things?”

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From this Saturday's Fox News Watch, regular guest and columnist Cal Thomas comes up with this doozy when his fellow panel member Alan Colmes points out the fact that the Republicans' presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his veep lie like rugs and haven't been called out for those lies by the media. Thomas' response... well the Democrats aren't asked enough why they don't have more of their politicians running on the Republican platform. I kid you not.

It's bad enough that he just completely ignores Colmes' points about the lying and how unrealistic and harmful his campaign rhetoric has been, but then he's got to stretch and claim that the media pointing out the fact that the Republican party is pretty much all white and not all that inclusive of minorities or concerned about issues that affect women, is the same as the media not asking Democrats why they don't have any "pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, smaller government, lower taxes people in your party." Never mind the fact that it's not true that there aren't any Democrats who agree with some or all of the issues Thomas was addressing here. As Colmes pointed out, it's a completely ridiculous comparison.

SCOTT: Well, should these presidential candidates be pressed to give us more?

COLMES: Of course they should.

SCOTT: We don't know what President Obama wants to do in the next four years.

COLMES: Of course we do. We've had him for four years. He's been much more opaque than Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney the minute you ask him in an interview, nobody presses him on how you gonna'... he wants to cut everything down to twenty percent of the G.D.P., he wants to cut taxes for the rich. He wants to raise military spending. And he wants, he said last night... that he was going to not increase taxes on the middle class. That is physically impossible. How's he going to do all that and solve the budget deficit problem? Nobody has pressed him on this and the media has not done its job nor have they held these people accountable for their lies, their constant lies about Barack Obama, the constant lies about what their plan is. They have not been held accountable.

THOMAS: You sound offended.

COLMES: Well, I am offended.

SCOTT: Well, are the media going to do the same thing at the Democratic convention?

THOMAS: Oh, no, no no. Here's what the media are going to do at the Democratic convention. They're not going to apply the same standards to Democrats as they do to Republicans. If they did, this is what it would look like. The media would be asking the Democratic leaders, why don't you have any pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, smaller government, lower taxes people in your party? It is all monochromatic, ideologically among Democrats. But when it's Republicans, they always say we need to hear more from groups, blacks, African Americans, women. So when the Republicans get those people up on the stage, Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio and others, well obviously they're just tokens. They don't really represent the party. So it's a complete double standard and you're never going to hear the same questions asked of Democrats as you do of Republicans.

COLMES: You're talking about race and ethnicity versus ideology. They're two very different things.

THOMAS: Well, not to the media they're not. Because if you're a black conservative, then you've gone off the, to mix a metaphor, the reservation...

COLMES: And I wonder why black conservatives aren't too happy about the Republican party. I wonder why.

I'd like someone to ask Thomas what's "pro-life" about starting wars, why after busting the bank under Bush that anyone should really believe Republicans are for "small government," and why the only ones Republicans want to raise taxes on are the working class. I don't expect we'll see that happen any time soon. Republicans are "pro-life" until you're born. Then you're on your own. And all the happy talk or minority speakers at their convention and propping up a few of their leaders which is supposed to show they care about diversity isn't going to change the fact that their policies are cruel and benefit the rich. If we had more "fair" coverage Cal, Republicans would be asked about those issues more often, rather than all this stupid horse race coverage we're treated to day in and day out.