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Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) on Sunday said that he opposed a bill to close the so-called gun show loophole and expand background checks to Internet gun sales because only better mental health laws will ensure that the Newtown mass shooting victims "did not die in vain."

"In my meeting with the Sandy Hook families, they told me that -- and of course, who wouldn't have sympathy and empathy for these people who have suffered a terrible loss -- but what they told me is that they wanted to make sure their loved one did not die in vain, that something good would come out of this," Cornyn told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "And so I think -- that's why I'm focused like a laser on the mental health component."

"But forgive me, sir," Wallace interrupted. "They are focused on tougher gun control. Specifically, the background check."

"Well for example, [Newtown shooter] Adam Lanza stole his mother's guns," Cornyn explained. "A background check would not have stopped that problem, that incident. A background check should have stopped James Holmes in Tucson, it should have stopped the Virginia Tech shooter."

"In other words, I think the mental health issue is the common element that we ought to be focused on, and I think we can do some good things," the Texas Republican added. "But I'm not for symbolism over substance. I think we can't just pat ourselves on the back and say we're going to pass some enhanced penalties for trafficking or other issues or background checks when they don't really go to solve the problems that cause these terrible tragedies."

Cornyn pointed out that the bipartisan legislation proposed by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) would not have prevented any of the four most recent mass shootings.

"The [Newtown] parents say that doesn't matter," Wallace noted.

"Well, what matters to me is that we not just engage in a symbolic act and pat ourselves on the back and say we've done something good and left the problem unsolved," Cornyn insisted. "I would like to try to solve the problem by focusing on the common element of these recent tragedies, which is the mental health issue."

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Saturday Night Live took a shot at President Obama and the Senate and whether there's going to be any meaningful gun control legislation passed any time soon. Sadly, their parody wasn't that far from reality on whether we're going to see anything will make a real difference make its way through this Congress controlled by the NRA any time soon.

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Someone needs to explain the definition of insanity to Bloody Bill Kristol. During a discussion on Fox' Special Report With Bret Baier, Kristol was asked about the Republicans and their recent efforts to "rebrand" the party, and it seems Kristol believes if they just start obstructing President Obama again and vote for things like repealing "Obamacare," they won't have to worry about how they look!

Of course, no one on the panel pointed out to him that that is exactly what they've been doing already for the last four years and it hasn't gone so well. Not that what the others want to do -- keep the same policies but just try to make them sound more palatable to the public -- is going to work, either.

And note to Kristol: Your party doesn't care about doing anything to improve access to health care, making it more affordable or regulating the banks. We don't need to hear their words or yours to know that. All we have to do is look at their voting records to see what their priorities are. The notion that the GOP has any alternatives to fixing anything that is not more of the same is laughable.

Here's more from Real Clear Politics: Kristol: GOP Should Worry Less About Looks; Act On Conservative Principles:

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: If I hear another politician talking about rebranding the party or changing the image, why don't they just advance policies? Republicans control the House of Representatives, right? They very much dislike Obamacare. Fine, pass a bill repealing Obamacare or delaying it and then pass a replacement. It's not going to pass the Senate, President Obama's not going to sign it, but it will show how Republican policies help.

Republicans dislike the financial regulations in Dodd-Frank, pass different regulations that help community banks. If you can't pass the whole thing, pass bite-sized pieces of legislation that would help the country. I mean, I really think they should talk less about rebranding themselves and actually pass some legislation, either big legislation or medium-sized bites that which embody conservative principals.

JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS: Why have they been losing so badly on messaging, Bill?

KRISTOL: They haven't been losing that badly on messaging. They lost the presidential election by 3 points, they held the House of Representatives, the Democrats got 1 million more votes for the complete House out of 110 million cast, or something like that. And if they simply govern effectively, if they do their best in the House and they oppose President Obama, they'll do fine. They should worry less about how they look and they should just act according to conservative principles.

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As Digby noted, it seems the Republicans are now trying to kill the Frankenstein monster they created:

Karl Rove was instrumental in creating this monster. Now it's got a mind of its own.

It's hard to know how this will play out. The Tea Party is really just the re-branding of the far right of the Republican Party. But it may just be that the establishment made a mistake in doing that. They don't see themselves as Republicans anymore. They see themselves as a distinct movement that wants to explicitly run the Republican Party.

The wingnuts have always had real power within their Party but they didn't know it. Now they do. And they have spent the last 30 years having people like Karl Rove rev them up and expand their egos into believing they represent a majority of Americans and have a responsibility to hew to their principles no matter what. It was a good way to market conservatism. But it was never true.

Rove, Tea Party in GOP civil war:

As they try to pick up the pieces from last fall’s defeat, the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP are at each other’s throats.

Karl Rove, fresh off the multi-million dollar disaster that was 2012, has launched a new initiative, The New York Times reported Saturday. Known as the Conservative Victory Project, the group, a spin-off of Rove’s American Crossroads, will help recruit establishment Republicans, as well as defend Senate incumbents against challenges from more conservative candidates.

The aim, in a nutshell, is to push back against the Tea Party and bring the GOP’s nominating process back under the control of the party’s Washington power-brokers. In recent cycles, Tea Party-backed Senate candidates have won the Republican nomination over more moderate GOPers, only to be defeated in the general election. In several cases—think of Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks—they’ve been done in thanks in part to campaign trail slip-ups that more seasoned candidates might have avoided.

But the news has triggered a full-blown revolt among conservative activists, both inside and outside Washington. Read on...

And here's more from Steve Benen: Welcoming the Conservative Victory Project to the field:

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Jon Stewart hit the hypocritical Republicans this Tuesday night for their apparent problems with basic math and their opposition to passing the Buffett rule after attacking the money spent on Planned Parenthood:

STEWART: So, let's see if I can get this straight. $47 billion in millionaires’ money is less than $300 million in mammograms and birth control.

They might care about the public noticing their blatant hypocrisy if they were capable of feeling shame, but they've made it obvious over the years that they are not.

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Once again on Fox News Sunday, what's up is down and black is white in conservative upside-down land. Liz Cheney is asked about President Obama calling for an extension of the payroll tax holiday and whether Republicans refusing to do so would be bad for them because they showed no similar concerns when it came to paying for the Bush tax cuts which primarily benefited the wealthy.

Naturally Cheney tried to turn it around to President Obama, claiming that if he had somehow been directly involved with the "Super Committee", Republicans might have been willing to strike some kind of deal with the Democrats instead of just politicizing the process more than it was already.

Cheney also accused the President of wanting to sabotage the economy on purpose for political gain. As many have already pointed out, if anyone can be accused of sabotaging the economy, purely for political gain, it's the Republicans.

Transcript below the fold.

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Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R) insists that he wasn't pressured by anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist into sabotaging a deal to lower the U.S. budget deficit.

After Kyl indicated that he was open to a super committee deal that would raise revenues as well as cut spending, Politico reported that Norquist called Kyl with "the tone of a teacher scolding a second grader."

"So, I call Kyl. 'What did you say? What did you mean? How can we work together on this?'" Norquist recalled asking the senator.

"And then he went down on the [Senate] floor, and he gave a colloquy about how we're against any tax increases of any sort. Boom!"

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank noted that as the committee was just hours away from complete failure, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) made a final effort to reach a deal last Monday.

"[O]bservers knew the effort was going nowhere for one simple reason: Kyl was in the room," Milbank wrote.

"Is that story true?" Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Kyl Sunday. "Are you and other Republicans somehow cowed by Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pledge?"

"The answer to both questions is absolutely not," Kyl declared. "And the proof in the pudding is the fact that the so-called Toomey plan that the Republicans -- all six of us -- offered to the Democrats would have specifically raised tax revenues."

The plan Kyl claimed Republicans offered, which was authored by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), would have been a massive tax cut for the rich. At the end of 2012, the top tax rate is set to rise to 39.6 percent as Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire. But under the Toomey plan, top rates would have dropped to 28 percent, which is even lower than they are now.

"It would have been the biggest tax cut since Calvin Coolidge," Kerry told NBC's David Gregory. "And we all know how that turned out."

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Neil Cavuto is terribly upset that the Republicans in the Senate have decided not to support Paul Ryan and the House's budget plan and dismantle Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. Cavuto opened his segment with American Pie playing in the background and followed with this:

CAVUTO: Alright, I don't want to be melodramatic (too late for that Neil), but let it be known that this is the day America's financial future died. I want you to write it down, May 10, 2011. The day tea partiers elected to the United States Senate not only caved, they quit. They folded their spending tent and left.

And all because some Medicare recipients stomped their feet and roared. And those Republicans ran into their buzz-saw and just bugged out. I am telling you, they didn't just blink, they bolted. Which is odd because Republican Senators like Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio got to where promising big cuts.

Then they ran into this big old wall. They discovered some folks were fine, cutting spending, but in the case of some Medicare recipients, just not their spending.

It is a familiar story. Cut, just don't cut my stuff. So now my friends, we are all stuck. Republicans in the Senate said, because the reality is Democrats control the Senate today, so they're keeping their powder dry for when they control the Senate some day.

Which is why they are putting off things like Medicare until after 2012, as if the stark reality of things we're facing will be any less after 2012. They won't. I can understand their political math, but I fear out far more unfriendly math, by then likely one and a half trillion dollars more in debt, not even a game plan as how to hack that debt.

They say they'll focus then, but I fear it will be too late. No wonder all this talk of a third party now. The Grand Old Party has botched it. Time was of the essence and now the time has gone.

And now, they're of the essence and now they're the ones risking being gone. History will show it started this day, the tenth of May, 2011, when they gave up the fight and they lost the war. This spring day in 2011, they lost something else, their souls.

How dare all of those selfish seniors expect that their children and grand children be taken care of in their old age? Sorry Neil, but you just lost yours running this fearmongering segment.

We've got the biggest income disparity since the Gilded Age in the United States and you want to throw seniors under the bus. Shame on you.

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In the wake of the news that Harry Reid is going to force the Senate Republicans to vote on Paul Ryan's horrid budget proposal that already passed in the House, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough looked to me like he was giving former Club for Growth President and current Senator from Pennsylvania Pat Toomey a chance to do some early damage control if Reid does force the Senate Republicans to take a vote on Ryan and the House Republican's budget bill.

I hate to break it to Toomey and Scarborough, but all of the talk in the world about how "serious" and "adult" and supposedly necessary Ryan's budget cuts are, it's not going to make his draconian proposals go over any better with the voters once they get a look at his plan.

And of course Toomey and Scarborough's ridiculous interview doesn't get to the substance of what is being cut. Just saying it's unreasonable that we can't take spending back to the levels the government had in previous years is completely ridiculous. The devil is in the details with who they're taking care of and who they're cutting services to and not just broad, sweeping, meaningless talking points like we saw out of the two of them here. And also par for the course, there was no mention of the Ryan budget cutting taxes for corporations on the backs of the poor, the working class and our seniors.

What matters are our priorities and Toomey's priorities are taking care of his rich campaign donors. We'll see how well that goes over with voters once Harry Reid forces that vote on the Senate floor. I'm sure Toomey knows full well that he and his fellow Republican Senators might be in for some town hall meetings like we've seen their counterparts in the House putting up with if they vote for Ryan's budget. Here's more from TPM on that.

Reid To Senate Republicans: You Wanna Privatize Medicare? Vote For It!:

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I know I'm tired of hearing this latest ridiculous analogy from Frank Luntz being repeated by our politicians, comparing American families' budgets to government spending and a family needing to “tighten their belt” and “do more with less.” That said, somehow, I don't think Pat Toomey ran this one by Luntz before he stuck his foot in his mouth and showed how entirely out of touch he is with the working class on Andrea Mitchell's show today.

In Pat Toomey's world, some "tough decisions" families might have to make when tightening their belts are getting rid of their "nannies", not baby-sitters... nannies, their gardeners, and they might have to skip taking expensive vacations. So no jetting off to Hawaii or Europe people.

I've just got to ask, in what America does Pat Toomey think he's living in these days if those are the things that pop into his head when talking about what most Americans would have to give up if they have to tighten up their household budgets?

And someone explain to me how Republicans breaking the bank under Bush with tax cuts for the rich, two wars they kept off the books, and bailing out Wall Street among other things that have driven up our deficit in any way, shape or form comparable to an average family running up a credit card?

After praising Rep. Paul Ryan's draconian budget proposal as “a very thoughtful, visionary plan that was bold and courageous, and has very substantive and very constructive reforms of the kind we need”, Andrea Mitchell asks Toomey about his own budget proposal he's about to release.

And here's the transcript of Pat Toomey's unfortunate and extremely out of touch analogy.

MITCHELL: But, correct me if I'm wrong. You suggested that there are ways to spend to, to pay off the bond holders but not pay other accounts. And I think what the Treasury Secretary is saying is that's akin to paying your mortgage but not paying your credit card bill, that either way you lose your credit rating and you scare the markets. Whether or not you're technically in default isn't the real issue.

TOOMEY: Well, here's the real issue. That analogy of course totally obscures the fact that both your mortgage and your credit card are debts that you have incurred. Both are forms of money that you borrowed and that you owe back to lenders. And my legislation has said, in the event that we don't raise the debt ceiling upon reaching it, the first priority for the Treasury with the huge resources that are coming in anyway from tax revenue would be to pay our lenders.

So what I am saying is, the better form of the analogy is the family that has been living beyond its means and run up huge debt, would have to make some tough decisions like maybe laying off the nanny, maybe not going on an expensive vacation, maybe discontinuing the gardeners who come and cut their grass. Maybe they would have to make some cuts. And that's what I think we need to do right now instead of what the administration wants which is just to throw them some more credit cards and let them continue spending the way they have been.

TPM has more on Toomey's budget proposal here – 'Pay China First' -- Republicans' Wild Plan To Avoid U.S. Debt Default:

New Republican legislation in the House and Senate would force the U.S. government to reroute huge amounts of money to China and other creditors in the event that Congress fails to raise its debt ceiling.

"I intend to introduce legislation that would require the Treasury to make interest payments on our debt its first priority in the event that the debt ceiling is not raised," Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) wrote in a Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

If passed, Toomey's plan would require the government to cut large checks to foreign countries, and major financial institutions, before paying off its obligations to Social Security beneficiaries and other citizens owed money by the Treasury -- that is, if the U.S. hits its debt ceiling. Republican leaders insist they will raise the country's debt limit before this happens. But first, they're going to try to force Democrats to accept large spending cuts, using their control over the debt limit as leverage. That means gridlock, and the threat that they'll come up short.

That's where Toomey's idea supposedly comes in. And yet, according to the Treasury Department, his plan wouldn't actually avoid a default, or its catastrophic consequences.