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From this Monday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, Rep. Marsha Blackburn did her part to make sure that the Republican party remains the "stupid party." I don't think remarks like this are going to help them much with making inroads with women and minority voters.

GOP Congresswoman: I Opposed Domestic Violence Bill Because It Protected Too Many Groups:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday openly admitted that she opposed the latest reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) because it included protections for LGBT, Native American, and undocumented victims of domestic violence.

In an appearance on MSNBC, Blackburn pointed out that the latest iteration of the law protects “different groups” and thus dilutes funding for straight, non-Native American women with the proper documentation:

When you start to make this about other things it becomes an “against violence act” and not a targeted focus act… I didn’t like the way it was expanded to include other different groups. What you need is something that is focused specifically to help the shelters and to help out law enforcement, who is trying to work with the crimes that have been committed against women and helping them to stand up.

Domestic violence is domestic violence, period. And there is no way to justify Blackburn’s suggestion that some victims of this violence are more deserving than others. Read on...

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As Think Progress noted, Republicans immediately shot down President Obama's proposal to increase the minimum wage to $9 per hour during his State of the Union address, claiming that it would harm job growth and make it harder for small businesses to hire. None of that is true of course, but that's not going to stop them from looking out for campaign donors like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association -- both of whom are against the proposal. Guess they want to keep that cheap labor coming!

Wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn however, had a different take on why it's acceptable to pay Americans starvation wages, and accidentally shot a big hole in her own talking point. Don't expect her to retract what she said if she's asked about it:

OOPS: GOP Rep. Inadvertently Makes The Case For Nearly Doubling The Minimum Wage:

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) chose a different reason to oppose the proposal today. A stronger minimum wage, Blackburn said, would negatively affect the ability of young workers to enter the workforce as teenagers, and would prevent them from learning responsibility like she did when she was a teenage retail employee making a seemingly-measly $2.15 an hour in Mississippi:

BLACKBURN: What we’re hearing from moms and from school teachers is that there needs to be a lower entry level, so that you can get 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds into the process. Chuck, I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store, down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making like $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. And I appreciated that opportunity.

Making $2.15 an hour certainly lower than today’s minimum wage, which federal law mandates must be at least $7.25 an hour. But what Blackburn didn’t realize is that she accidentally undermined her own argument, since the value of the dollar has changed immensely since her teenage years. Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.

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Any time I hear Rep. Marsha Blackburn start talking about "adult conversations" and Republicans needing to pay attention to their tone on any topic, I'm reminded of this little hissy fit she threw on the floor of the House just after the health care bill passed. Blackburn appeared on MSNBC's The Cycle and was asked about the immigration proposal put forth by a group of Senators this Monday and the fact that Republicans have been losing Latino voters in droves over the last few election cycles.

Her response was that they need to do a better job of getting their message out to the voters and that "sometimes their messengers aren't as good" or maybe they just haven't repeated their message enough times to be getting through to the voters. If she thinks the GOP needs some better messengers, maybe she ought to take a good look in the mirror and start spending a little less time throwing flames in front of the cameras.

And note to Rep. Blackburn, as Susie pointed out this Monday... the problem is not your messaging. It's you. She was all smiles for this interview but repeating the same rhetoric we've been hearing out of her for years now. You'd better secure the border first, even though migration from Mexico is at zero or below. No amnesty. Fix ICE even though we've had record deportations over the last year.

She and her cohorts have lots of obstacles lined up against making any meaningful changes to our immigration policy, regardless of all of the rhetoric we're hearing out of them right now.

Rep. Blackburn weighs in on new immigration proposal:

Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) who joined the show, said that along with other Republicans she is waiting to see what the exact details are and what other options are available. Rep. Blackburn said overall the “good thing is people are coming out and saying let’s get this problem solved and I like the fact that it has gone from being a back burner issue to a front burner issue.” However, when it comes to the bill there are certain “must haves” that she believes need to be included.

We need to make certain that we have a secure border, amnesty should not be included as it has not worked before and will not work again, those that are in our country need to pay and right their wrongs, she said. Rep. Blackburn continued to say, “Finally, you have to make certain that ICE is going to clean up their act, and that the immigration service is going to finally be a service that works. We all appreciate legal immigration, we want to encourage legal immigration and bring those individuals that want to come to America to seek a better life, we want to make certain they have the ability to be here legally.”

The eight senators do agree with Rep. Blackburn when it comes to borders; they said that before we can start creating permanent residents, we must first work on securing America’s borders and launch an employment verification system that actually works. As Rep. Blackburn said during the show, “This is a time to be very honest with the American people, just to say this is where we are, these are the facts, help us work through to a solution. I have to tell you I certainly hope that we do.”

Talk is cheap. I will be surprised if anything actually gets through the House, but we'll see. And I certainly don't underestimate the ability for any of them to come up with a really bad bill that doesn't have any labor protections in it.

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday said that she would be willing force a "thoughtful" shutdown of parts of the United States government if President Barack Obama did not agree to deep spending cuts.

"What we want to make certain is that this president, this administration, this bureaucracy realizes that kicking the can must stop," she told MSNBC's Chris Jansing. "It is spending cuts and it is imperative that we reduce the size of the federal government, that we get in on a mega-diet, that we end this out-of-control spending."

"There is the option of government shutdown," the Tennessee Republican continued. "There is an option of raising the debt ceiling in short-term increments... There's also the plan of three dollars in cuts for every one dollar of debt limit increase. So, the healthy thing is this, we are having a good discussion on it."

Jansing pointed to a study by the Bipartisan Policy Center which found that the government could continue to fund interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps during a shutdown -- but it would mean that almost every other federal program would grind to a halt.

"[B]ut doing all that will mean defaulting on everything — really, everything — else," The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote last week. "The FBI will shut down. The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs. The prisons won’t operate. The biomedical researchers won’t be funded. The court system will close its doors. The tax refunds won’t go out. The Federal Aviation Administration will go offline. The parks will close. Food safety inspections will cease."

"I think that there is a way to avoid default," Blackburn insisted. "If it requires shutting down certain portions of the government, let's look at that. Let's put these option on the table, be very thoughtful, but get this spending pattern broken. We cannot afford a $4 billion a day deficit and trillion dollar plus deficits every single year."

"So, it requires thoughtfulness and it requires that we are going to have a plan to work through this. I think that's where we as Republicans are headed."

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Sunday said that gun control laws were not the answer to mass shootings because hatchets, guns, cars and video games all had a role in violent deaths in the United States.

"What I'm hearing is that people want to make certain that -- first of all -- that we protect the Second Amendment and their Second Amendment rights -- protect their freedom and not impede that," Blackburn told CNN's Candy Crowley, adding that the focus should really be on "psychiatric and psychotropic drugs."

"They are also wanting to make certain we get in behind these video games. I watched a couple of these last night in preparation for this segment and, Candy, as a mother and as a grandmother, I was astounded with some of the things I was seeing on 'Call to Duty' [sic]. And, of course, we know the Norway shooter would go in and use that as target practice."

Crowley observed that "the steam for a ban on assault weapons is slowly coming out of the balloon" as time passes after the December mass shooting of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut.

But New York Times National Political Correspondent Jeff Zeleny pointed out that a defeat of the assault weapons ban would not bring down the entire effort to curb gun violence.

"I think that the president is committed to this," he explained. "Probably background checks, probably the [high-capacity] ammunition clips. But there is going to be another shooting probably, sadly. So, this is going to stay in the consciousness. I don't think this is going to recede."

"But the problem is that it could be a hammer, a hatchet, a car, a gun," Blackburn argued.

"But hammers, hatchets and cars aren't quite as fast as those clips," Crowley noted.

"We're still needing to look at this mental health," Blackburn continued. "And you have to make sure that you're protecting an individual's rights."

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During part of CNN's god-awful coverage of these ongoing negotiations over the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and the defense spending sequestration that none of them in Congress like, Your Money host Ali Velshi was co-hosting their live coverage, and he allowed Tenn. Rep. Marsha Blackburn to get away with painting the Democrats as the ones who are being stubborn and unreasonable during these talks, and to lay the blame for no deal being made on the Senate.

She did get some push back from Velshi, but of course it was the sort we see on that network all the time with the false equivalency game, where they're pretending like "both sides" are acting like petulant children for not reaching some deal and painting cuts to Social Security as harmless and a solution to our budget deficits, even though they'll cause a lot of pain for poor seniors and Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.

Velshi asked Blackburn who was at fault for the impasse, after complaining about the markets potentially reacting to the intransigence in Washington, why they were screwing around until the last minute before coming to a deal and Blackburn's response was that the Senate could have prevented this if they'd just passed all of the legislation that the House sent over to Harry Reid's desk. Paperwork! How dare Harry Reid not pick up their paperwork and send it all through?

Never mind the fact that we are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government and that they knew full well they were wasting everyone's time sending bills over they knew had no chance in hell of passing, or that some of them didn't even have support from Republicans in the Senate or that they were at fault for the bills being held up.

Here's more on some of what she cited here: House ‘Reconciliation’ Bill Was Anything But.

Democrats make last-minute stab at tax extenders

Preventing Crushing Defense Cuts

Too his credit, Velshi came back and reminded her that the House couldn't even pass Boehner's "Plan B" debacle that went down in flames just before Christmas. That said, he let her get away again with pretending that herself or the House Republicans have an ounce of interest in bipartisanship or working with anyone and doing anything other than obstructing if they don't get everything they want.

I don't know how many people watch Velshi's show on the weekends, but he's on there every single week, screaming about this impending doom if the Congress fails to work out a deal and then he brings in hacks like Stephen Moore and economists from right wing think tanks to debate about it. Or he's got Norquist on there every time you turn around. You can add him to the list of Villagers who seem intent on painting anyone that doesn't want to inflict some pain on our seniors and the most vulnerable among us as not being Serious, or adults. As Digby noted today: Fiscal cliff notes: The Villagers are stimulated by the prospect of human sacrifice.

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Sunday insisted that Republicans opposed raising taxes on the wealthy and supported cutting earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare because they were "the party of big ideas."

"Inside the [Republican] caucus, what people are looking at is how do we solve the system-wide problem," she explained to CNN's Candy Crowley. "And if you're going to talk revenues, you've got to talk cuts, you have to talk reform of your trust funds -- Medicare and Social Security -- and you've got to deal with entitlements."

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), however, advised Republicans to accept President Barack Obama's deal on raising rates on top earners "and just get that off the table" so that taxes would not go up on the other 98 percent of Americans.

"I have a different approach," Blackburn insisted. "The good thing is we are the party of big ideas. We are putting ideas out on the table and saying, 'This is how we solve this, let's talk about it.' Now, what I want to do is make certain no one's taxes go up. Let's look at cleaning up the tax code."

Crowley observed that it would be impossible to reform the tax code before the so-called fiscal cliff kicked in at the end of the year.

"You all lost the election," the CNN host told Blackburn. "Doesn't that put some limitations on what you can ask for here? You lost members of the House, you lost members of the Senate and you lost the White House."

"The president thinks he has momentum, I think he's running on adrenaline from the campaign," the Tennessee Republican replied. "Second thing, we won the House."

"The American people clearly said, 'We don't want our taxes to go up,'" she added. "You can not be practicing escapism and not putting these issues on the table. And it is an imperative to deal with the spending."

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Rather than admitting that Republican's policies just aren't that attractive to most women, and that maybe they should take a look at those policies if they ever intend to change that dynamic, Rep. Marsha Blackburn twisted herself in knots and came up with some pretty ridiculous excuses for the lack of women in GOP leadership roles.

After being asked about the backlash to House Speaker John Boehner putting 19 white men in charge of their committees before finally appointing Rep. Candice Miller to lead the House Administration Committee, Blackburn did her best to try to put a positive spin on the situation.

JANSING: Well, there is a perception out there that there's not an opportunity for them to move ahead. When I talk to women who try to recruit other women to fun for Congress, to run for higher positions, one of their concerns is that they won't really have a significant place at the table.

BLACKBURN: Well, I think that that's always a concern. But you know, one of the things that I have found is that, number one, you don’t have to be entitled in order to lead, and that is something that we see happening. Women jump in and take the leadership role and they get in there and it’s kind of the lead from behind and move to the front. They take the responsibility. They perform beyond expectations and by doing that they have the ability to change the debate.

My goodness, look at what has happened in the tea party movement. Every time I go to a tea party rally, I'm amazed. The crowd is primarily female. The organizers are female, and I think that that bodes well for participation, grass roots participation and policy making participation.

When asked about the fact that women organizers or participants at the grass roots doesn't change the fact that their numbers in leadership positions on the Congress are still sorely lacking when compared to their Democratic counterparts, Blackburn responded by saying that Democrats have more women in their ranks and who have served for longer lengths of time. She also came up with this doozy.

BLACKBURN: They have women that have had more of a career in the political process. Those of us who are conservatives, we kind of have a circuitous route in our lives. Politics is not something that is a lifelong job for us. We have careers in the private sector. Look at the women that are in the House. You know we've been marketers and nurses and we've been teachers and we're education specialists. And we bring all of that expertise to bear in the public sector.

Yeah, they have careers, unlike those Democratic women who are all just lifelong politicians. And what is it with Blackburn suddenly loving the idea of "leading from behind?" I thought that was what that Socialist, Marxist, Kenyan usurper, evil, Democratic President did.

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Apparently President Obama is now capable of time travel, since wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn accused him of harming American Motors, while defending Willard's big lie he keeps telling about Jeep moving all of its production to China.

Congresswoman Accuses Obama Of ‘Harming’ Auto Company That Went Defunct In 1988:

A Republican congresswoman accused the Obama administration of promulgating regulations that are undermining job creation at an auto manufacturer that has been defunct since 1988. She was responding to a question on Monday about Mitt Romney’s dishonest claims regarding Jeep moving its production overseas.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dodged a question about Romney’s debunked Jeep claims and instead attacked the Obama administration for issuing regulations that are harming workers at American Motors Corporation, a company once headed by George Romney. AMC was sold to Chrysler during the Ronald Reagan administration and its brands were then discontinued:

CHIRS JENSING (HOST): Let me ask you about some of the things going on on the campaign trail, and there’s a controversy about Mitt Romney telling voters that jeep is going to move production to China. According to the company that’s entirely false. Is he lying about that?

BLACKBURN: Oh, well, I don’t know. I haven’t talked with with the campaign staff about that. I will say this. For workers in the auto industry, across the board, whether it is GM, whether it’s Nissan, whether it’s American Motors, individuals are very concerned about the impact of regulation that the EPA and OSHA and other federal agencies are heaping on our manufacturers.

It seems Romney and his surrogates don't care how low they have to go or whose intelligence they have to insult if they think it will help them win this election. Let's hope this headline from Business Insider is correct on the consequences for that -- Mitt Romney Has Been Telling A Huge Whopper About The Auto Industry, And His Campaign Is Finally Paying For It.

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Who needs Fox when you've got CBS doing double duty for them with interviews like this one with Sen. John McCain on Face the Nation? The Republicans have been foaming at the mouth since the embassy attack over a month and a half ago in Libya and now we can add McCain's name to the long list of Republicans who have compared "Benghazi-Gate" to Watergate or called for impeaching President Obama for how the matter has been handled.

I'm sure there are others I missed, but here's at least a partial list of those who have been making the same hyperbolic attacks:

Rush Limbaugh: RUSH: Benghazi cover-up "This dwarfs Watergate'

Ron Christie: Worse than Watergate??!! WTF

Sean Hannity and Donald Rumsfeld: Hannity Trots Out Donald Rumsfeld To Help Turn Benghazi Into Watergate

Newt Gingrich: Gingrich: Libya Cover-up Worse Than Watergate

Mike Huckabee: Huckabee Suggests Impeaching Obama Over Libya Embassy Attack

Col. David Hunt: Col. David Hunt Tells Jerry Doyle: Benghazi Coverup Worse Than Watergate

And Rep. Marsha Blackburn: Marsha Blackburn Calls 'Benghazi-Gate' 'Worse Than Watergate'

They've all got their talking points aligned perfectly, don't they? And last but not least, here's Grampy McCain from this Sunday: McCain: Libya either a "cover up" or "incompetence":

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