House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) appeared on CNBC yesterday, and made a comment about the IRS controversy that struck me as problematic. Cantor, like most Republicans, seems have abandoned the argument the White House intervened and directed the tax agency on tax-exempt applications, and is now arguing that the White House should have intervened and directed the tax agency on tax-exempt applications, even during the Inspector General probe.

"If you've got an ongoing IG investigation or audit and there comes to you information about this type of behavior where you are discriminating against political opponents, I do not accept the fact that the White House says well we couldn't interfere with that audit or that investigation. That's not true. They know that kind of activity was going on. That is clearly a point at which they should have gone in and said, 'Don't do that anymore.' And that would not have interfered with the continuance of that investigation by the Inspector General."

There's quite a bit wrong with this. In fact, Cantor, who routinely struggles with the details of various developments, seems confused about some of the basics.

First, there's the "there comes to you information" phrase -- as Cantor sees it, the White House was notified about potential trouble at the IRS in 2012 and had a responsibility to act. He's mistaken -- the White House was notified of the Inspector General's investigation in April 2013, once it was complete and ready to be published. Cantor's theory seems to be based on his trouble with the calendar.

Second, and just as important, Cantor believes White House officials who didn't know about IRS troubles could have given agency officials instructions without interfering with the ongoing investigation. You know who disagrees? House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who said the exact opposite just last week. And I think it's fair to say Issa has no interest in helping bolster the White House's arguments.

And while we're at it, let's go ahead and note that Cantor believes the IRS office in Cincinnati was "discriminating against political opponents," but let's not forget that several liberal groups were subjected to the same scrutiny.

So what in the world is Eric Cantor talking about? And why is he repeating bogus arguments on national television?

A Cantor spokesperson told Dave Weigel:

"As soon as questions were raised or an investigation known, IRS and Administration leaders could have and should have reiterated the nonpartisan operating principles to employees, and perhaps taken further steps, to ensure this political targeting of American taxpayers had ceased and would not happen ever again. The White House continues to say that an investigation ties their hands completely, and that simply is not true."

Of course, by this reasoning, congressional Republicans could have "reiterated the nonpartisan operating principles to employees" as well, since they were notified of the IG probe last summer. And why didn't they? Because congressional Republicans, like the administration, decided to let the IG investigation proceed so officials would have all the facts.

That was the right call. That Cantor is so eager to manufacture an administration scandal that he chooses not to understand this is a shame.

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) chatted with National Review's Robert Costa this week, and Costa complained that President Obama "doesn't seem to socialize" with House Republicans. Cantor replied that he'd "just had drinks" with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough the other night, and then reflected on the bigger picture.

"The one thing I've always said -- and I've said it to Rahm [Emanuel] and Jack Lew -- is that this president has squandered an opportunity to use the office to do some good and actually get some things done. [...]

"Either the president doesn't like to engage with people, or it's somehow beneath him to do so. I don't know, and I told Denis that the president could benefit himself and the country a lot by developing those relationships and understanding where conservatives are, instead of just thinking that he knows where we are. But that has not been the case over the last four years of his tenure."

Not surprisingly, there's a quite a bit wrong with Cantor's deeply strange perspective. First, Obama actually has gotten "some things done" -- economic recovery, health care, auto industry rescue, counter-terrorism successes, Wall Street reform, civil rights breakthroughs, etc. -- but the bulk of his successes came before Cantor became Majority Leader and his radicalized caucus brought the governing process to a halt.

Second, the president has done quite a bit of schmoozing, even with Republicans who hold him in contempt, refuse to compromise with him, call him a "socialist," embrace bizarre conspiracy theories about him, and basically do everything imaginable to try to destroy his presidency. The outreach hasn't produced much success.

And third, does Cantor seriously believe the paralysis in Washington would improve if Obama had a greater "understanding" of Cantor and his allies? As if there are such deep complexities to the caucus' far-right ideology and nebulous agenda that they require deep presidential analysis to fully appreciate?

Indeed, Kevin Drum flagged a classic anecdote from 2011, when Cantor killed a "Grand Bargain" on debt reduction, not because he disagreed with it on substantive grounds, but because he didn't want the president to achieve a pre-election victory on an issue Republicans sometimes pretend to care about.

Perhaps Obama's "understanding" of Cantor's worldview isn't really the problem here.

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It didn't get much attention last week, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) suffered a significant defeat last week. The Virginia Republican, as part of a larger rebranding campaign, crafted something called the "Helping Sick Americans Now Act," which intended to transfer money from the Affordable Care Act to high-risk pools for the uninsured.

Democrats saw through the scheme, but more importantly, House Republicans hated the idea, seeing it as a plan to "fix" Obamacare. Humiliated, Cantor was forced to pull his bill without a vote.

The overlooked fiasco was a problem House GOP leaders saw coming.

Less than two weeks ago, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy walked upstairs to Majority Leader Eric Cantor's Capitol office to discuss a sensitive issue: Why did Cantor schedule a vote before McCarthy had the chance to survey Republican support?

The meeting -- described as "tense" by several people familiar with it -- ended with McCarthy abruptly standing up and storming out of the room. Aides downplayed the exchange. But a week later, it turned out that McCarthy's pique was merited: The health care-related bill was suddenly pulled from the floor in what was the most recent stumble for House Republicans.

If this was a rare misstep, and the Republican-led House ran like a well-oiled governing machine, it'd be easy to overlook. But the trouble with Cantor's bill appears to be evidence of a much larger and deeper problem.

We talked a month ago about House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) "Make the Senate go first" rule that effectively takes the House out of the governing process altogether, but Jake Sherman's report makes it seem as if Boehner doesn't have much of a choice -- this is a House "in chaos." Republican leader are "talking past each other"; the House conference "is split by warring factions"; and influential outside groups are fighting their ostensible allies.

It's ugly, and it's getting worse.

There appear to be a series of factions, which clearly don't see eye to eye. Right-wing lawmakers want to invest their time and energy into combating Democrats and voting on health care repeal; Cantor and his allies are focused on rebranding and conservative-friendly solutions; and Boehner has some big-ticket items in mind as he weighs the future of the so-called "Hastert Rule."

In the meantime, four months into the new Congress, the House has no policy agenda, and according to the Politico report, GOP leaders even consider immigration reform a "long shot" in the lower chamber.

I'm not entirely convinced that the House is so far gone that governing is literally impossible, especially if the Speaker's office is willing to forgo the "majority of the majority" and start passing bills with Democratic votes. Boehner has already done this four times this year, and if he's willing to do it some more, this Congress may not be a complete disaster.

But clearly House Republicans are divided against themselves. There's no meaningful leadership; no interest in cooperation or compromise; and post-policy nihilism rules the day. The demise of Cantor's health care bill was a reminder that House Republicans will reject their own party's policy ideas with nearly the same speed as they'll reject Democratic ideas.

For many Beltway pundits, the inability of House Republicans to act like a governing caucus is mainly President Obama's fault -- if only he'd schmooze with them, form personal relationships, and act like a character in an Aaron Sorkin movie, maybe these radicalized nihilists would be more likely to get something done.

But all available evidence suggests the collapse of the House GOP is out of Obama's hands. The House Republican conference is simply broken.

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We talked earlier about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who thought he was being clever. He unveiled a bill that would invest in high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions, but pay for it by gutting the critical provisions of the Affordable Care Act. For Cantor, it was a political calculation -- instead of just voting to repeal "Obamacare" over and over again, why not try a scheme that gives the appearance of governing?

House Republicans disappointed Cantor and rejected his plan. And what might they want instead? To vote to repeal "Obamacare" over and over again.

House conservatives are clamoring for a floor vote on a full repeal of the 2010 healthcare overhaul, saying that freshman Republicans need an opportunity to tell their constituents they tried to scrap the law.

You read that right -- House Republicans are afraid their constituents might not realize they tried to repeal the health care reform legislation unless GOP leaders bring it to the floor again.

Estimates vary, but by my count, congressional Republicans have voted 39 times to repeal all or some of the Affordable Care Act. Do House members seriously believe a 40th time is necessary to help get the message through to the public?

To be sure, Cantor's policy wasn't a good plan, at least on the substance, but it at least had the benefit of being clever. If you didn't look too close, you might think Republicans were kinda sorta trying to help people, which is why this bill was seen by Cantor as so important to his rebranding initiative.

But as it turns out, the nuance was lost on the far-right, which prefers attacking with blunt objects. Don't try to undermine "Obamacare" with subtlety and poll-tested solutions, the argument goes, just repeatedly try to kill it, no matter how ridiculous it makes Republicans look.

Care to guess who's leading the charge on this approach?

If you said, Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) office, you're right.

Three years after Obamacare was signed into law, Republicans on Capitol Hill are locked in an unusually bitter intraparty fight over whether to fix what they see as problems with the law, or to insist only on the unlikely dream of fully repealing the health care law.

The breach became painfully visible to conservative insiders on a private listserv this week when a top aide to Senator Ted Cruz exchanged a series of terse and combative emails -- obtained by BuzzFeed -- over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's attempt to change the law's treatment of patients with pre-existing conditions.

The emails, which were circulated on the "Repeal Coalition" listserv of activists and congressional staff, show a clear division inside the Republican Party's powerful conservative wing -- a division over substance, and strategy. On one side are conservative groups like Americans for Tax Reform, pushing hard for the legislation; while on the other Sen. Ted Cruz' top staffer, the group Heritage Action and others insisted Republicans stay with a simple message: "kill the bill."

A Cruz aide told his colleagues last week, the message behind Cantor's ploy "sucks." He added, "We oppose Obamacare. Period. We will repeal it. Period."

The far-right's approach, ironically, is exactly what Democrats are hoping for from their rivals. The White House and other supporters of the reform law want this to be an entirely binary fight -- those who want to preserve and expand vs. those who want to destroy and go backwards. The Affordable Care Act's champions may struggle with smaller fights over minor provisions, but so long as Republicans remain focused and committed to a dead-end goal -- full repeal, nothing else -- the fight is relatively easy.

The House can pass a repeal measure 39 times or 390 times; it doesn't make a difference. It might make far-right lawmakers feel better about themselves to spin their wheels, but the Senate isn't going to repeal the law, and neither is the White House.

If Republicans intend to keep banging their head against that wall, it seems Democrats are more inclined to find that amusing, not intimidating.

Associated Press

It looked like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had come up with a fairly clever scheme. Unfortunately for him, it died yesterday when his fellow House Republicans refused to go along.

The gambit was a little complicated, but in a nutshell, Cantor thought he'd come up with a way to severely undermine the Affordable Care Act -- the House would pass a bill to strip federal funds from the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which helps states set up the exchanges that are needed to make the ACA work. The proposal would then divert that money into existing-but- underfunded high-risk pools for the uninsured -- a favorite GOP health care policy -- that help people with pre-existing conditions buy subsidized coverage.

For Cantor, the plan checked a lot of boxes. If the exchanges are gutted, implementing "Obamacare" would be nearly impossible. At the same time, voters were supposed to see this and say, "See? House Republicans really are interested in providing solutions to problems people face in the real world." As a matter of public policy, this was an awful idea, but the whole endeavor was billed as an element in the party's "rebranding" campaign.

So what happened? Cantor's plan failed miserably because his own allies balked.

On Wednesday, Republican leaders abruptly shelved one of the centerpieces of Mr. Cantor's "Making Life Work" agenda -- a bill to extend insurance coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions -- in the face of a conservative revolt. [...]

Items that Mr. Cantor had hoped would change the Republican Party's look, if not its priorities, have been ignored, have been greeted with yawns or have only worsened Republican divisions.

Cantor expected Democratic opposition and he received it -- House Dems immediately saw through the scheme and the White House issued a veto threat yesterday morning.

But that wasn't the majority leader's real problem. Rather, far-right lawmakers, activists, and organizations saw Cantor's proposal as an effort to "fix" the Affordable Care Act by investing in high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions.

For the left, Cantor's "Helping Sick Americans Now Act" was a wolf in sheep's clothing. For the right, it was just a sheep to be slaughtered.

Republican leaders assumed that if they just explained the legislation to their own members -- this was about cutting "Obamacare" off at the knees, not actually improving the law -- they'd have enough support to pass the bill. But House Republicans wouldn't listen, seeing this as a misguided effort to spend public funds in support of a provision within the health care law they've been told to despise.

The Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation and tea party groups have urged Republican lawmakers to oppose the bill, which was authored by GOP Reps. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, Michael Burgess of Texas and Ann Wagner of Missouri. Club for Growth said it would include this vote in its annual rating of members of Congress.

Brent Bozell, a tea party leader, dubbed the bill "CantorCare" in a news release Tuesday.

Republican lawmakers privately fretted that the bill would bolster Obamacare, which the GOP has long tried to dismantle.

Cantor, humiliated, was forced to pull the bill from the floor, realizing it would lose if brought up for a vote. His office insisted that the proposal would be brought back after the leadership had more time to educate its caucus, but there's no indication of when that might happen.

Remember, Cantor and his allies didn't really expect this to become law; they only hoped to use this as a political scheme that made House Republicans look better. In practice, it had the opposite of the intended effect, and divided the caucus instead of uniting it.

This was, as NBC's First Read put it, "mundane posturing," which should have been easy for the far-right lawmakers, but which ended up backfiring.

Here's House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), arguing that sequestration cuts are dangerous:

And here's House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) yesterday, complaining that it's irresponsible to say that sequestration cuts are dangerous:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Thursday blasted President Obama for touring around the country "scaring people, creating havoc" instead of working on a replacement for the sequester. [...]

Cantor said Obama's warnings ignore the fact that discretionary federal spending will be cut to 2009 levels when the $85 billion in cuts begin on Friday. But he said the federal government was able to provide many of these services in 2009.

"Was the food not inspected? Because that's what the claim is. That somehow if we were to reduce spending at all we couldn't have food inspectors," he said. "Did we have any border patrol agents in 2009? Of course we did."

I know Cantor often struggles with the basics of public policy, but no one is saying food inspections and border patrol will simply cease to be. Rather, the point is, Republican budget cuts are going to force reductions -- there will be fewer food inspectors and border-patrol agents doing their jobs because their budgets were indiscriminately slashed.

But even putting that aside, Cantor's contradiction reinforces a larger point: the GOP has absolutely no idea what it wants to say about sequestration. The Majority Leader offers an extreme example -- few have gone quite as far as Cantor to say the sequester is both dangerous and not dangerous at the same time -- but he's not the only one struggling with coherence.

As best as I can tell, the latest Republican message is this: the sequester is a terrible idea, which President Obama came up with, which will slash key investments, which is a great idea, which Republicans have championed. The policy will both help and hurt the economy, strengthen and weaken national defense, and hurt domestic priorities while leaving them unaffected.

Thank goodness we have policy wonks like Eric Cantor to help the public straighten this out.

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Among congressional Republicans, especially House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), a certain mythology has taken root on the fiscal negotiations from the summer of 2011. Unfortunately for the party, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has just helped debunk the GOP's story.

The Democratic version of events happens to be the accurate one: Republicans had threatened to crash the economy on purpose unless their debt-ceiling demands were met, and in the hopes of resolving the crisis, President Obama offered Republicans an overly-generous, $4 trillion "Grand Bargain," which included entitlement cuts and new revenue. Boehner was inclined to accept it, but his caucus balked, forcing the Speaker to walk away from the table.

Not so fast, the GOP says. In the Republican version of the story -- which happens to be factually wrong -- Boehner wanted to accept Obama's offer, until the president started making unreasonable, last-minute demands, which the Speaker couldn't accept. Boehner tells this story so often, it's no longer clear if he even realizes he's lying.

Either way, the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza has a fascinating new piece on Eric Cantor, which helps pull back the curtain on the talks from two years ago.

In June of 2011, the President and the Speaker began working toward a Grand Bargain of major tax increases and spending cuts to address the government's long-term budget deficits. Until late June, Boehner had managed to keep these talks secret from Cantor. On July 21st, Boehner paused in his discussions with Obama to talk to Cantor and outline the proposed deal. As Obama waited by the phone for a response from the Speaker, Cantor struck.

Cantor told me that it was a "fair assessment" that he talked Boehner out of accepting Obama's deal. He said he told Boehner that it would be better, instead, to take the issues of taxes and spending to the voters and "have it out" with the Democrats in the election. Why give Obama an enormous political victory, and potentially help him win re-election, when they might be able to negotiate a more favorable deal with a new Republican President? Boehner told Obama there was no deal. Instead of a Grand Bargain, Cantor and the House Republicans made a grand bet.

The bet failed spectacularly.

It did, indeed. The gamble was, Obama would lose. Instead, the president won re-election fairly easily, and the White House, freed from re-election concerns, will never, ever offer Boehner another deal as generous as that one again. Republicans took their fight to the electorate, and the public made their preference clear: the American mainstream sides with Obama's agenda, not the GOP's.

But Cantor's candor also tells us something important about the larger narrative.

For nearly two years, the Speaker of the House has said Obama walked away from the Grand Bargain, which helped created a toxic political environment that hasn't faded. Republicans were prepared to take the plunge, we've been told repeatedly, but it was that rascally president who was too afraid of the Democratic base to follow through. Plenty of pundits, some of whom really should know better, actually believe this version of events. They even use it as an example of failed presidential "leadership"

But now, it's the House Majority Leader who's willing to say it's a "fair assessment" that Boehner's tale is, and has always been, untrue. It wasn't the president who balked, it was Cantor who "talked Boehner out of accepting Obama's deal."

Cantor didn't want to solve the fiscal problem he and his party helped create during the Bush/Cheney era; Cantor wanted to leave the problem untouched so his party would have something to whine about during the 2012 election campaign.

It amazes me that the Majority Leader was willing to admit this -- it makes Cantor look amoral and it makes Boehner look remarkably dishonest -- but I'm glad he did it anyway.

Have you ever heard Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) complain about "pork barrel" spending? The senator has a trick he's especially fond of: find spending related to animals, which might sound silly.

In one classic example, McCain blasted "$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi," asking, "How does one manage a beaver?" Hilarious. In reality, $650,000 hired workers to disrupt beaver dams, which in turn prevented significant flood damage to farms, timber lands, roadways, and other infrastructure in the area.

The money, in other words, was well spent, but when framed in a lazy and sarcastic way, the investment may appear wasteful. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) enjoys playing the same game (via Barbara Morrill).

Right off the bat, we already know Cantor is blatantly lying when he said President Obama "wants to raise your taxes." What Obama actually wants is to close tax loopholes -- nearly all of which only benefit the very wealthy -- and use the revenue to reduce the deficit. It's a policy that congressional Republicans used to support, too.

But putting that aside, we quickly find a beaver-management-style problem. That rascally Obama wants to spend our hard-earned money to pay people to play video games? Outrageous!

And while I suspect most reasonable people would balk at the government spending $1.2 million to pay people to play World of Warcraft, there are, of course, the details Cantor either doesn't know or doesn't want you to know.

In this case, the $1.2 million is a National Science Foundation grant, being used by scholars at North Carolina State University to research cognitive functions among the elderly, exposing them to video-game stimuli to examine how it affects their ability to think, examine, and react. Cantor may find this amusing, but medical research like this isn't wasteful.

Morrill added, "Because there's nothing funnier than medical research on cognitive functioning in seniors. Well, maybe it could be even funnier if it offered insight into the treatment of Alzheimer's and dementia. That would be a laugh riot. But hey, why let facts get in the way of juvenile tweets designed to mislead, eh, Eric?"

Incidentally, Cantor's tweet includes a link to his own site, where he lists a series of expenditures he considers wasteful. The point, obviously, is to influence the sequester debate -- Republicans don't need to strike a balanced compromise with Democrats, since there's so much waste that deserves to be cut.

Of course, at the outset, there's an arithmetic problem -- to replace the sequester, Republicans would need $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, and Cantor's list doesn't even come close to making up the difference.

But the more pressing problem is that Cantor's examples of waste aren't actually wasteful, and medical research into cognitive functions among senior citizens isn't amusing. Jon Chait had a good item on this:

[I]n point of fact, even the handful of wasteful programs that supposedly justify the no-taxes line aren't actually wasteful. Take the $47,000 smoking machine. Sound outrageous -- government bureaucrats buying themselves an expensive piece of machinery to smoke cigarettes while regular folks like John Boehner have to light up by hand, like a sucker! In fact, it turns out to be a piece of medical research equipment used by the Veteran Administration:

"VA Researchers are using the smoking machine to cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in mice by the same mechanisms by which the disease occurs in Veterans and others who smoke cigarettes," a VA official told HuffPost in an email.

"The cessation of smoking does not curtail the progression of the disease and there is currently no effective therapy for the treatment of the condition," the official said. "Using this mouse model of COPD, VA researchers will test potential new treatments for the disease."

You see, Mr. Speaker, if you want to study the effects of smoking, you could kidnap some unsuspecting person and force-feed him Marlboros. But the scientific community finds this approach unethical, so machines to test the effects of smoking on mice are considered a standard work-around.

In some respects, Republicans are inadvertently bolstering the Democratic argument. If the right's favorite examples of wasteful spending aren't, in reality, wasteful, maybe the nation really does need more revenue.

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As best as I can tell, New York Times columnist David Brooks is a well-connected pundit. Powerful people return his phone calls, and when he wants information from top governmental offices, Brooks tends to get it.

And with this in mind, it's puzzling that Brooks based his entire column today on an easily-checked error. The conservative pundit insists President Obama "declines to come up with a proposal to address" next week's sequester mess, adding, "The president hasn't actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration."

I'll never understand how conservative media personalities get factual claims like this so very wrong. If Brooks doesn't like Obama's sequester alternative, fine; he can write a column explaining his concerns. But why pretend the president's detailed, already published plan, built on mutual concessions from both sides, doesn't exist? If you're David Brooks, why don't you just pick up the phone, call the West Wing, and say, "Do you folks have a proposal to address the sequester or not?" I'm certain an administration official would help him by sending him exactly what he's looking for, and then he wouldn't have to publish claims that are demonstrably wrong.

In the larger context, Brooks' deeply unfortunate error is symptomatic of a larger problem: as sequestration approaches, we're stuck in a debate in which facts seem to have very little meaning.

"President Obama has said that unless he gets a second tax hike in eight weeks, he will be forced to let criminals loose on the streets, the meat at your grocery store won't be inspected and emergency responders will be unable to do their jobs," [House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.)] said in his statement.

"These are false choices. We are faced with the negative effects of the sequester because Democrats have not been able to take even the smallest step towards controlling spending."

Why lie like this? Cantor surely knows that President Obama has already accepted over $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. Cantor surely knows over $2.4 trillion in debt reduction has already happened. Cantor surely knows the deficit has nearly been cut in half over the last four years. Cantor surely knows Obama has offered to accept another $600 billion in spending cuts as part of a sequester compromise. So why put out a statement based on claims that aren't true?

The country is facing a real threat next week and there's room a worthwhile debate, but it's important for the public to understand that a constructive discussion is impossible when there's no shared basis for reality.

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Republican consultant Alex Castellanos

We talked recently about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-Va.) rebranding initiative, which is his fourth such effort in the last four years. Apparently, he's going to have some company.

When Cantor launched his first rebranding effort in 2009, it was through an entity called the National Council for a New America. What's been largely forgotten is that it wasn't alone -- after Republicans' electoral failures in 2008, all kinds of rebranding groups popped up to also help improve the party's image.

Remember organizational powerhouses like Rebuild The Party, the Center for Republican Renewal, Renewing American Leadership, and Resurgent Republic? No? Well, that's because they all came and went fairly quickly, just as the National Council for a New America did.

As it happens, it appears history is repeating itself. In the wake of another national cycle in which the GOP struggled, Cantor has a new rebranding initiative, and once again, he's not the only one.

NewRepublican.org is the brainchild of GOP consultant and CNN pundit Alex Castellanos, whose clients have included Mitt Romney and former President George W. Bush. Castellanos is joining a growing cottage industry of Republicans who are trying to rebrand and rebuild the party as President Obama begins his second term. [...]

The group is not advocating that the GOP abandon its conservative principles; rather that the party figure out how to present them in a more modern and effective way.

How original. Cantor's office, the Heritage Foundation, and now NewRepublican.org are all pursuing the same goal at the same time, and may yet find more related groups doing the same thing.

All of these efforts have one thing in common: they're predicated on the assumption that the Republican agenda is effective and popular, and the party will thrive once they find the most persuasive words to convince Americans how great the GOP really is.

It is, after all, the whole point of rebranding: a fresh coat of paint on an unchanged product. Republicans aren't losing because they're part of a radicalized party with a failed governing vision and a narrow electoral base; they're losing because they just aren't spinning their awesomeness effectively enough.

Or so the argument goes.

To reiterate a point from a month ago, this really is misguided. Republicans have found themselves on the wrong side of the American mainstream, not because of inadequate talking points, but because most of the country likes Medicare, doesn't hate gay people, thinks the rich can afford to pay a little more in taxes, wants fewer wars, supports taking steps to prevent gun violence, and believes the government should stay out of our bedrooms and doctors' offices, among other things.

The road to electoral success is for Republicans to consider changing their policies, not their sloganeering.

Associated Press

Doug Elmendorf, the director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, told the House Budget Committee this morning that automatic sequestration cuts will cost the American economy 750,000 jobs just this year. And really, that's just the start, the "sequester" will push the economy closer to a recession, and do real damage to everything from education to food safety to medical research.

All of this leads to a fairly simple question: has Congress lost its mind?

The sequester was supposed to force both Democrats and Republicans to the bargaining table to work out a debt-reduction deal. With two weeks remaining until the brutal cuts kick in, Republicans realize how drastic the consequences would be, but aren't in the mood to compromise.

Republican lawmakers say a deal to reduce the deficit and replace $85 billion in automatic spending cuts set to take effect on March 1 is even less likely after President Obama's State of the Union address. [...]

"The president said we do not need a bigger government, but a smarter government, and I agree. But actions speak louder than words," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). "For four years, we have seen record deficits and mountains of debt heaped on our children and grandchildren. And for four years we have seen little to no action from President Obama or his Democratic colleagues in the Senate to take our spending problem seriously," Cantor added.

Three simple questions for Eric Cantor:

1. Do you realize President Obama and his Democratic colleagues have already approved $2.5 trillion in debt reduction; the deficit is shrinking at its fastest pace in generations; and government spending isn't growing at all? Or do you not pay attention to such details?

2. Do you realize that you voted for Bush's tax cuts, Bush's wars, Bush's Medicare expansion, and Bush's Wall Street bailout, every penny of which was deficit financed, without any regard for the "mountains of debt heaped on our children and grandchildren"? Or do you assume everyone in America has a very short memory?

3. If you already know the sequester will hurt Americans, why are you prepared to let it happen?

Of course, Cantor isn't the only one who's very hard to take seriously.

At this point, nearly every Republican member of Congress is saying the sequestration cuts will happen, and the GOP will simply tolerate the damage. These comments, in particular, were literally unbelievable.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday predicted the sequester would take effect, blaming President Obama and Senate Democrats for not offering an alternative or passing a budget.

"Because the Senate has not acted, because the president has not put a proposal yet on the table, that is why I think the sequester will probably occur," Ryan told "CBS's This Morning." "We have acted in the House. The Senate has not, the president has not, and that is why I think it will happen."

Maybe Paul Ryan isn't feeling well?

Senate Dems have a sequester alternative. The president has a sequester alternative. Both the Senate and the president have said they're ready for talks with Republicans. How can Paul Ryan not understand this?

"We have acted in the House"? For crying out loud, how can the chairman of the House Budget Committee not realize that his own caucus in his own chamber hasn't acted and hasn't presented a sequester alternative?

Honestly, becoming a prominent Republican policymaker must be incredibly liberating -- you get to say anything you want, even when you know it's the opposite of reality, without any regard for evidence or honesty, knowing there will be no consequences whatsoever.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday and presented an interesting argument regarding looming, automatic sequestration cuts. It's so amazing, let's annotate this one paragraph.

"You know, the problem is, David, every time you turn around, the answer is to raise taxes [1]. And, you know, he just got his tax hike on the wealthy. And you can't, in this town, every three months, raise taxes [2]. And again, every time, that's his response [3]. And, you know, we've got a spending problem. Everybody knows it [4]. The House has put forward an alternative plan [5]. And there's been no response in any serious way from the Senate or the White House [6]."

Ready for this?

[1] Democrats aren't proposing a tax increase; they're proposing a compromise including spending cuts and new revenue through closing tax loopholes.

[2] The new revenue from a slight increase in top marginal rates was the first increase in income tax rates in two decades. Once every 20 years is not the same as once "every three months."

[3] "His," in this case, refers to President Obama, who's repeatedly offered congressional Republicans overly-generous offers on debt reduction. Indeed, that's what he's done "every time."

[4] We don't have a spending problem. We don't have a spending problem. We don't have a spending problem. We don't have a spending problem.

[5] In this Congress, the House has not put forward an alternative plan to the sequester. It simply does not exist in this reality. There were alternatives in the last Congress, but as Cantor probably knows, bills do not carry over from one Congress to the next, and if House GOP leaders want to offer an alternative, they'll have to write one and then vote on it, not lie about its existence.

[6] Both the White House and Senate Democrats have unveiled different proposals to replace the sequester, and unlike Cantor's imaginary plan, they exist. What's more, both Democratic alternatives are built around compromises on the larger policy, while Republicans insist they will not compromise at all.

All things considered, it appears the House Majority Leader has no idea what he's talking about.