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Did The RNC Just Declare The Outreach Recommendations From The 2012 “GOP Autopsy Report” A Success?

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Remember that 2012 “GOP Autopsy Report?” The one that called for Republicans to rally behind comprehensive immigration reform and to work on that whole Latino outreach thing?

You’d think that now that Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for President, the RNC would just want to forget the whole damn thing ever happened.

But according to MSNBC’s Steve Benen, the RNC has done some heavy-duty revisionist history, declaring the report’s recommendations a resounding success:

Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s communications director, announced over the weekend that RNC has completed a new study of the 2014 election cycle and released this 22-page report:

“Working with our partners at the RGA, NRSC, NRCC, and RSLC, we developed a very aggressive, early, and targeted approach for 2014. Today the GOP is the majority party at every level except the presidency.

While the news media has ignored or discounted the extraordinary gains that began in 2010 and accelerated in 2014 and 2015 (and in special elections since then), it is a fact that Republicans enter the 2016 campaign with more office holders than at any point in the party’s history.

The challenge now is to apply the lessons of a constantly evolving political process to winning the 2016 election at every level including the presidency.”

If you missed hearing about this report, that’s probably because the RNC didn’t make much of an effort to publicize it. The party did not issue a press statement to note the autopsy’s release; there was no mention of the document on the RNC’s blog; there were no references to it on the RNC’s Twitter account; and a quick search on Google News this morning pointed to literally zero articles about the report.

In fact, were it not for Sean Spicer’s tweet – published mid-day on a Saturday – it might have gone unnoticed altogether.

Regardless, what exactly did the RNC find in its look back at 2014?

Not surprisingly, Republicans are still delighted by their recent gains, and for good reason: by practically every metric, 2014 was an excellent cycle for the party. But while much of the autopsy celebrates the GOP’s recent victories, there was a point raised on page 5 of the new document that jumped out at me:

“The Republican opportunity has also been strengthened and expanded because of the Republican National Committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project and the bold changes which grew out of it and which Chairman Priebus has implemented vigorously.”

That’s right. Republicans — after blocking comprehensive immigration reform in the House, giving votes to Steve King to deport DREAMers, vowing to undo the President’s executive actions on immigration, and then nominating a Presidential candidate who has called Mexicans “rapists” — considers outreach recommendations from the 2012 autopsy report a resounding success.

The stuff we’ve listed above is just a fraction of the ugly, bigoted rhetoric we’ve seen coming from the 2016 Republican Presidential primary, which now is tied to the Republican Party at large now that Donald Trump is their standard-bearer.

As Spicer said himself, “the GOP is the majority party at every level except the presidency.” With Latinos a key constituency needed in order for Republicans to regain the White House in 2016, it looks like things are gonna stay that way for a while longer.