The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 49% of Americans hold a negative view of the Republican Party while 26% have a positive view. By comparison, the Democratic Party has a net positive rating, with 44% holding a favorable view of the party and 38% holding an unfavorable one.

First Read: “By the way, most of the recent negative movement for the GOP is among core Republicans. The GOP was already viewed very negatively by Democrats and indies; it couldn’t really get much worse with those two groups. So this latest shift for the GOP is due to the fact that a growing number of core Republicans were not happy with how the party handled the fiscal cliff.”

Byron York: “The purpose of the House Republican retreat, now going on in Williamsburg, Va., is to help GOP lawmakers come to terms with just how weak they are. Even though the party controls the House, the talk in some quarters at Williamsburg is of adopting a ‘minority mentality’ to oppose President Obama’s initiatives the way Republicans did when they were in an even weaker position in 2009. By doing so, the thinking goes, the GOP might be able to rebuild itself after last November’s devastating losses.”

“The problem is, if Republicans are asked what they can reasonably expect to accomplish in the next six months, after a variety of fights with the president, they don’t have an answer. What would constitute an achievable victory? They don’t really know.”

The Cloakroom: GOP retreat gets off to a rocky start.

“This is about tone. It’s about messaging and it’s about showing people what we’re for instead of what we’re against.”

— Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), quoted by the Washington Post, describing his message to House Republicans at their retreat.

The Cloakroom: A session on wooing minorities is being held in a room named after Virginia slaveholders.

“I’m just honored to even have a voice that matters a little bit. A lot of people dream to be part of the policy mix.”

— Former Utah Gov. Jon Hunstman (R), in an interview with BuzzFeed, claiming he takes only 2% of interview requests.

“I think the Republican Party is having an identity problem.”

— Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on Meet the Press.

“Somebody got them the way they are now. Why can’t you change them?”

— New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, quoted by the Washington Post, on the Republican party.

Jon Ward notes Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential election “forced the GOP to recognize that its support is built on a shrinking base of aging, ethnically monolithic, and geographically isolated voters — while the Democrats have amassed a coalition of growing and engaged constituencies. As one very senior Senate Republican aide put it to me, the party can’t win national and statewide elections just with ‘older white people’ anymore.”

“The path back for Republicans, and for conservatives more broadly, is as much cultural as it is tactical. Tactically, they need better candidates, and younger, more diverse people at all levels: political consultants, field operatives, grassroots volunteers. But to attract organic support from young people, women and minorities and continue harvesting new faces, conservatism needs an attitude adjustment: get hungry, get humble, and get to know more people who aren’t like you.”

“Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress confidently predicted that the re-election of the president would break the partisan ‘fever’ they claimed had enveloped Washington and the Republican Party,” NBC News reports.

“But the weeks since the election have found Republicans as dogged as ever in their resistance to Obama, whose initiatives – including gun control, immigration reform and efforts to boost renewable energy – still face an uncertain path forward, particularly in an unruly House of Representatives still controlled by a Republican majority. And Republicans are signaling a willingness to go to great lengths to bend coming battles in their favor.”

Politico: “After four-plus years of embittered partisan combat, he views his GOP
bargaining partners with more than a little contempt, and he momentarily
vanquished enemies who just can’t say ‘yes’ to him.”

“Unfortunately when the Republican party needs to be a big tent party it seems to me we are doing everything we can to become a pup tent party.”

— Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), quoted by WTVR-TV.

The Republican Main Street Partnership, a group that has promoted moderate GOP lawmakers and policies, will remove the word “Republican” from its name, Yahoo News reports.

The organization’s board of directors voted to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as “The Main Street Partnership.”

“The Republican Party seems as divided and angry as ever,” the AP reports.

New York Times: “From Mitt Romney’s loss on Election Day through the recent tax fight that shattered party discipline in the House of Representatives, Republicans have seen the foundations of their political strategy called into question, stirring a newly urgent debate about how to reshape and redefine their party.”

“At issue immediately is whether that can be achieved through a shift in tactics and tone, or will instead require a deeper rethinking of the party’s longtime positions on bedrock issues like guns and immigration… The coming legislative battles are certain to expose even more division in the party. And with establishment Republicans and Tea Party activists at times speaking as if they are from different parties altogether, concern is spreading throughout the ranks that things could get worse before they get better.”

The Los Angeles Times says the recent budget battles have exposed a divide between the GOP’s solid Southern base and the rest of the country.

John Judis notes “there is a regional division in
the party between the deep South, which contains many of the diehard
House Republicans, and the Republicans from the Northeast, industrial
Midwest, and the Far West. In the House vote on the fiscal cliff, Republican House members from
the deep South opposed it by 83 to 10, while Republicans from the
Northeast favored it by 24 to one, and those from the Far West by 17 to
eight.”

“The party right now is a holding company that’s devoid of a soul and it will be filled up with ideas over time and leaders will take their proper place. We can’t be known as a party that’s fear-based and doesn’t believe in math. In the end it will come down to a party that believes in opportunity for all our people, economic competitiveness and a strong dose of libertarianism.”

— Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R), in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, on the state of the Republican party.

New York magazine has a fascinating piece on the National Review magazine’s Post Election Cruise 2012 in which roughly 600 Republicans took a vacation and tried to figure out what went wrong at the voting booths.

“This was a phenomenon that was common on the cruise–the conservative pundits and columnists from the National Review attempting to gently disinter their followers from unhelpful conservative propaganda. For people who believe in the truth of works like Dreams From My Real Father, a conspiracy-­theory documentary that argues that Obama’s real father was a communist propagandist who turned Obama into a socialist Manchurian Candidate, this could be difficult work.”

Mark McKinnon says it is becoming clear that the Republican party “is against everything and for nothing.”

“Nothing on taxes. Nothing on gun control. Nothing on climate change. Nothing on gay marriage. Nothing on immigration reform (or an incremental, piece-by-piece approach, which will result in nothing). It’s a very odd situation when the losing party is the party refusing to negotiate. It may be how you disrupt, but it is not how you govern, or how you ever hope to regain a majority.”

“And so, we have a Republican Party today willing to eliminate any prospect for a decent future for anyone, including itself, if it cannot be a future that is 100 percent in accordance with its core beliefs and principles. That’s not governing. That’s just lobbing hand grenades. If you’re only standing on principle to appear taller, then you appear smaller. And the GOP is shrinking daily before our eyes.”

First Read: “In covering politics, you always want to resist the temptation to
overstate things. After all, what’s up one day can go down the next. But
it’s difficult to see what took place in Congress last night as
anything other than an unmitigated disaster and embarrassing blunder for
House Republicans — all over something that was viewed as a
negotiating tactic or PR move.”

Rich Lowry: “If part of what President Obama was after was Republican humiliation and disarray, it’s going better than even he could have hoped.”

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds it’s the Republican party’s message that appears to be the problem, not the messengers who are delivering it.

Key findings: 53% of Americans say the GOP’s problem is that they are overly conservative and unconcerned “with the welfare of the people, particularly those in the lower and middle income levels.” By contrast, just 38% say the bigger issue is that Republicans “need a better leader to explain and win support” for their policies.