Reince Priebus (Photo: YNN)

President Barack Obama's vagueness on the issue of gay marriage is continuing to draw Republican ire this week, and during his interview on the Albany-based Capital Tonight earlier this evening, the head of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, unloaded a barrage of additional criticism.

"I don't know what the mystery is," Mr. Priebus said, taping his side of the interview from Washington. "It's actually just pathetic and silly at this point. I mean, he's the President of the United States, what's your darn position? Just say it and move on."

Mr. Priebus went on to suggest Mr. Obama is trying to pull a fast one on the American public so that he can maintain the support of both socially conservative and socially liberal constituencies.

"For whatever reason, he thinks we're either not paying attention or that everyone is so stupid that we can't figure out what he's up to," he argued. "And what he's up to is he wants the benefit of having no position of the subject so he can capture both sides of the issue."

And then came the animal analogies. First was a comparison to the sea-dwelling jellyfish.

"Even if some people watching this might agree with him on some things, what people don't appreciate is a jellyfish, and those are the types of people I think, in America, we're all sort of sick and tired of," he said. "I think that's going to be a big problem for him moving forward."

Mr. Priebus also declared Mr. Obama to be a "chicken" for keeping his position on the issue relatively ambiguous.

"We have to wait for some bulletin to figure out what the president's positions are on major issues across America," he said. "It's a pretty chicken thing to do I think, and I think as President of the United States he ought to have enough guts to tell everyone what he thinks instead of playing games."

While the line of attack isn't especially unique compared to previous ones leveled against the president, it's interesting that Mr. Priebus is emboldened enough to take the charges to Mr. Obama in pretty stark terms even in a state where gay marriage is already the law of the land.

Senator Skelos (Photo: Facebook)

There's currently some scuffle in Albany over the election date for the state legislature's primaries. A judge recently set the Congressional and U.S. Senate primaries to June 26th, earlier than the originally scheduled September 11th date, to comply with federal law. Assembly Democrats have introduced a bill to bring the State Senate and Assembly primaries to this June 26th date, but the leader of the Senate Republicans, Dean Skelos told Liz Benjamin last night he really didn't like the plan, and directly said the Assembly bill was a non-starter.

"The problem we face with a June primary date ... is that you're going to have members of the Assembly, in particular, from New York City, where most of the primaries are, ... they're going be looking for union endorsements [and] they're going to be campaigning through the budget and end of session," Mr. Skelos said. "If you want to bring dysfunction back to Albany, that's what a June primary would do."

When Ms. Benjamin pointed out the state legislature is already reasonably close to a budget deal this year and the state's budget could realistically be completed by March, freeing candidates up for campaigning, Mr. Skelos said he was looking at future years.

"This is this year, we have other years that the legislature and the Governor will continue to govern," he countered.

"I think it's bad timing to have the primary when people are going to be more concerned about winning their primary, raising money, [and] trying to get endorsements than actually governing," he continued, repeating his messaging.

Democrats contend that having different primary election dates for the same year is expensive and confusing. A later primary date could also serve as an incumbent protection process, they argue, as it would give less time for challengers to raise money and campaign for the general election.

But, as Mr. Skelos also criticized the judge for placing federal primary date in June during last night's interview, it's fairly clear what his opinion is on any sort of earlier primary date.

According to Azi Paybarah in Albany, Capital Tonight's Liz Benjamin asked Senator Kevin Parker a question about a possible deal with Governor Cuomo, and Parker said there was no deal with the governor, unaware that leadership had struck rent renewal deal.

Benjamin then tweeted Parker's no deal comment. A Democratic spokesman tweeted to correct the record, but Senate Republicans -- following the Capital Tonight tweet -- thought there was no deal, and adjourned.

"I've never heard of making legislative decisions based on a Tweet," said a Democratic source.

Governor Cuomo had threatened to call a special session to keep the legislature in Albany until a deal was passed, but as coup veteran Jimmy Vielkind pointed out, an extraordinary session requires different bills.

So the Senate Republicans hastily reconvened the existing session, and the extension passed -- shortly after Parker declared himself "the most powerful person in the Twitterverse!"

Skelos said Republicans will caucus again at 11 a.m. Monday.