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Great moments in GOP rebranding: Hispanic vote deemed unimportant, Hillary Clinton likened to a 'Golden Girl'

Has the GOP abandoned its so-called rebranding effort, deemed so important in the wake of last year's presidential election?
File Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answers questions from students from around the world during a \"Global Townterview\" at the Newseum January 29, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, File)
File Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answers questions from students from around the world during a \"Global Townterview\" at the Newseum...

Has the GOP abandoned its so-called rebranding effort, deemed so important in the wake of last year's presidential election? Between the House's effort to scuttle the Senate's bipartisan immigration reform bill, and the emergence of a new strategy that manages to insult both women and the elderly, it certainly is starting to look that way.

An article appearing in the New York Times over the weekend shed light on the Republican efforts to portray presumed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton as "old news." Case in point:

At a conservative conference earlier in the year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ridiculed the 2016 Democratic field as “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’ ”

It is worth noting that while Clinton is 65 years old, Reagan was close to 70 when he was first sworn in. And had John McCain been elected in 2008 he would have been 72. McConnell himself is 71 years old. But who's counting?

But why has the party that earlier this year proclaimed "the first step in getting voters to like you is to demonstrate that you like them” had a change of heart? On Monday, conservative commentator Brit Hume, expressed what would appear to be a growing sentiment in the Republican party, namely that the need to reach out beyond the party's traditional white, male base has been exaggerated. In particular, Hume addressed the question of whether the GOP even needs to "get right with the Hispanics":

http://youtu.be/9vh7qLsiAmU