“Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized.”

— Celeste Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly, quoted by Bay Area News Group, after saying former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) should have apologized for his rape remarks last year.

“President Obama’s public shaming of congressional Republicans to act on a range of issues may be winning at the polls — but it risks alienating the people needed to reach bipartisan compromise,” The Hill reports.

“While Obama has made a strategic calculation that he needs to marshal public support to push through his agenda, centrist Republicans warn the president and his allies could go too far with partisan events and campaign-style ads targeting GOP lawmakers.”

Club for Growth Action launched a new website, PrimaryMyCongressman.com, to raise awareness of RINOs who are “currently serving in safe Republican seats.”

Michael Kinsley chronicles how Republicans, and their affiliated media, are complaining “loudly about feeling bullied by their opponents.”

“Big, bad President Obama, creepy Harry Reid, that B-word Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the gang of toughs called the Democratic Party are picking on the poor defenseless GOP. As a campaigning theme, it seems insane. The GOP has long prospered by portraying Democrats as the wimps, dangerously weak and unfit for command. Does the name Michael Dukakis ring a bell? And in really heady moments, like 1984, when Reagan earned his second term, or 1994 and 2010, when sweeping victories in off-year elections seemed to foretell an imminent landslide, Republican fantasies of one-party rule involved the triumph of their party, not humiliation by the other side.”

“In fact, moaning about how weak you are compared with the opposition seems so obviously a political mistake that we can only reach one conclusion: This must be sincere.”

The Cloakroom: The GOP makeover falters.

“If the president needs some tweaks and adjustments, the Republican Party is pretty much in need of a major makeover.”

— Pollster Fred Yang, commenting on the findings in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Mark Halperin: “In the internal divisions over how to handle the end of the endgame on the sequester PR fight, the GOP is oh-so divided on what kind of legislation to offer. Lindsey Graham and a few others are suddenly born-again tax raisers. John McCain is affronted by the notion of turning spending decisions fully over to the President. And there remains a deep, subterranean fear that the White House would win the hearts-and-mind battle (big) if the current cuts kick in.”

A new Pew Research survey finds that 62% of Americans says the Republican party is out of touch with the American people, 56% think it is not open to change and 52% say the party is too extreme.

Opinions about the Democratic Party are mixed, but the party is viewed more positively than the GOP in every dimension tested except one. Somewhat more say the Republican Party than the Democratic Party has strong principles (63% vs. 57%).

“I’m a
Reagan Republican, which makes me left of center in my party.”

— Former Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), quoted by the New Yorker.

“The Democrats’ story is the Republicans are the party of the rich, the
Democrats are the party of everybody else. And if that’s the narrative
people believe, we’ll never win another national election.”

— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), quoted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson writes that Republican primary voters, party activists and party leaders “have a choice to make, ruthlessly clarified by recent events. They can take the path of Democrats in 1988, doubling down on a faltering ideology. Or they can follow the model of Democrats in 1992 and their own party in 2000, giving their nominee the leeway needed to oppose outworn or extreme ideas and to produce an agenda relevant to our time.”

The Cloakroom: It’s actually the Republicans who are overreaching.

Stu Rothenberg: “Ultimately, the Republican Party’s
problems go back to its base voters, who participate in primaries and
nominating conventions. Many of them are so blinded by their anger
toward President Barack Obama, the national news media and their own
party leaders that they are willing to nominate the most conservative
candidate in a primary, no matter how limited his or her appeal in a
general election. And for party strategists, there is no easy solution
to that problem.”

The Cloakroom: By refusing to negotiate, Republicans are hurting themselves more than Democrats.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) will speak at next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, The Hill reports.

Hendrick Hertzberg: “This is the third year that the Republicans’ Tea Party faction has elbowed its way into the post-SOTU spotlight. Its previous spokespersons, Representative Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, the pizza mini-mogul, were marginal cranks. Rand Paul, though a crank, is not so marginal: like Rubio, he is a member of the United States Senate, nominally subject to the disciplines of that august body’s Republican caucus.”

“We have fallen into a trap of believing the world revolves around Washington.”

— Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on what ails the Republican party.

Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) said he “is ready to move past his crushing eleventh-hour defeat from a self-inflicted wound in last year’s U.S. Senate race,” the Evansville Courier & Press reports.

He would not rule out a future run for office and “vowed not to shrink from the scene, no matter what else happens in the future.”

Said Mourdock: “I’m going to find a way to have my voice heard.”