By Tom Johnson | June 13, 2015 | 12:10 PM EDT

America no longer has a two-party system, argued Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman in a Friday post. That’s because the Republican party is essentially “defunct,” having been sucked into a “vortex of stupid” (i.e., taken over by right-wingers).

“The architects of this vortex,” wrote Longman, “are as varied as Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales and Regent University jurisprudence, neoconservative foreign policy, the mighty right-wing media wurlitzer, the campaign finance laws, the lack of any accountability for anything ever, the things defending torture does to the human spirit and the brain, the folks who will pay any price to keep science from interfering with their bottom line, what happens when you have to lower your standards to make Ed Meese and Sarah Palin acceptable.”

By Randy Hall | November 6, 2014 | 7:05 PM EST

The fallout from Tuesday's midterm elections continued to be felt on Wednesday evening, when the host of CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront pressed Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on whether his party -- which had just won control of both chambers of Congress -- will make “a fresh start” and agree to more compromises when working with the president during his last two years in the White House.

“I don't believe a thing he says,” the GOP official responded bluntly. Regarding immigration reform, he declared that Obama is “not trustworthy on this issue, and the only thing he has done is he's unified the country against” his policies.

By Tom Johnson | May 12, 2014 | 9:59 PM EDT

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus wants more of a say in choosing the party's 2016 presidential nominee. Makes sense, right? Actually, it doesn't, according to Salon's Jim Newell, who argued in a Monday piece that greater RNC control over pre-primary and primary-season debates will make them boring, thereby causing the many viewers who want to see the candidates snarling and sniping at each other to turn off their televisions or maybe not tune in at all. On the other hand, Newell gives the RNC credit for understanding after 2012 that "[t]he more [GOP] candidates are on public display with each other, the worse it is for the party."

Newell was especially disdainful of the RNC's plan to include conservative pundits on debate panels alongside journalists from so-called mainstream outlets. He alleged that when Republicans identify "the 'mainstream media' as the force behind any sort of intra-party problem, they’re using a reliable scapegoat."

By Randy Hall | August 17, 2013 | 4:05 PM EDT

Liberal media bias can turn up in some very unlikely places. One example of this concept is an article on the Business Insider website in which Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus was quoted as saying that the concept of illegal immigrants “self-deporting” back to their native countries -- as proposed by 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney -- was “racist.”

Soon after, the following message was added at the top of Brett LoGiurato's article: “An original version of this story said that Reince Priebus referred to Mitt Romney's comments as "racist." He said it "hurts us." Business Insider regrets the error.”