Reince Priebus. (Photo: Twitter)

This morning, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus held a press conference call to discuss Vice President Joe Biden's comment that middle-class Americans have been "buried the last four years." He also talked about his view that, despite poor poll numbers in the swing states, Mitt Romney has a path to winning the 270 electoral college votes necessary to defeat President Barack Obama, and he gave the RNC's take on footage of an old speech by the president that resurfaced on conservative media outlets last night.

Mr. Priebus said he agreed with Vice President Biden that the middle class has been "buried" during the first four years of the Obama administration.

"Obama and Biden have buried the middle class, and now they want to bury them some more," said Mr. Priebus. "I mean, just imagine what Barack Obama would do. He buried us economically in this country knowing that he would have to face re-election. Just imagine what he would do with nothing but daylight in front of him. Just imagine where this economy would go."

He went on to discuss Mr. Romney's economic policies, which he said would improve the country's financial situation.

"Getting our economy back on track, getting Obamacare off the books, reducing spending in Washington, cutting small business taxes, getting Keystone pipeline started and exploring energy across America is just the start. And that's the Romney/Ryan plan to save this country today," said Mr. Priebus. "We need a new direction. Joe Biden admits it, the American people know it and, thankfully, Mitt Romney has a plan to take us there."

Polls have increasingly been showing President Obama pulling ahead, specifically in Ohio. However, Mr. Priebus said he believes the Buckeye State is "extremely close." He's also confident the GOP has the ground game necessary to get a win for Mr. Romney.

"That's the one thing that I think that is a narrative out there that I just think is blatantly uninformed, which is the fact that the Democrats have this great ground game. I think we're going to crush the Democrats on the ground," Mr. Priebus said. "I just don't think they've got a very good ground game. I've looked through it, I've seen it. It's all smoke and mirrors. It's a lot of talk, but when you go around the neighborhood and you look at who's getting absentee ballots in the municipal clerks' offices and you figure out who's hitting their goals, in our case, we've got a sophisticated program around our GOP universe and we check that every single morning with municipal clerks' offices that are hooked up to our system. And I just know that we're better than them on the ground, and I think that we're going to crush them in Ohio."

Ohio isn't the only state Mr. Priebus is optimistic about.

"We have other good things going for us right now as well: Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada. There are other places that we're doing very well in that, quite frankly, we didn't win in ’08 but we're doing better this year," he said. "So, we'll wait and see. We've got it all on the table. Ohio is, of course, extremely important. It's nothing new, but I also see avenues to 270 opening up for Mitt Romney in places that weren't there in ’08."

Mr. Priebus concluded the call by answering a question about a video of a speech President Obama made at Hampton University in 2007 in which he acknowledged the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright and criticized the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina as evidence of racism. The speech was covered by the media when it first occurred, but it was heavily hyped last night by Fox News and the conservative websites Drudge Report and The Daily Caller, which argued it "escaped scrutiny" in 2007. The DNC sent an email last night describing the resurfacing of the video as "lame" and "desperation tactics." For his part, Mr. Priebus said he believes "people are going to draw their own conclusions from the video."

"Clearly, I know that some people are pretty troubled by it, but, you know, the fact of the matter is people have to watch that video on their own and draw their own conclusions," he said. "I think that President Obama's views shape his policies and his policies, in turn, are having a very negative impact on our economy. I don't believe that government is the solution to our problems in this country. I think free enterprise is the solution to the problems in our country. I don't think handouts are the solution to our problems in this country."

Reince Priebus (Getty)

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns held a conference call this afternoon to discuss a report released yesterday by the Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee, which revealed former White House deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina (who is currently President Barack Obama's campaign manager) used his personal email to conduct official business and White House staffers conducted meetings outside the building to avoid being included in the official record. Mr. Priebus said this represented a hypocritical failure of the Obama administration to live up to their promises of transparency and suggested it may indicate illegal activity.

"We got more news today that the self-proclaimed 'most transparent administration in history isn't transparent at all. They've been using the Caribou Coffee shop across the street from the White House as an executive branch annex to hold secret meetings with lobbyists and political cronies," said Mr. Priebus. "These newly uncovered emails showed one White House staffer explicitly asking an industry insider to meet him at Caribou so that he wouldn't have to appear on the White House visitor logs. The White House doesn't want the American people to know who they're meeting with on a day-to-day basis. They've had hundreds of meetings at Caribou, so we have no way of knowing what insider deals they're cutting."

Mr. Priebus described the "stunning revelations" in the report as part of a pattern of the Obama administration "cover[ing] up their own ethical lapses."

"These are stunning revelations. They show the Obama administration has not only found loopholes in their own self-imposed transparency rules," Mr. Priebus said. "They're also failing to follow the law under the Presidential Records Act. This supposedly transparent administration has spent the last three-and-a-half years actively trying to cover up their own ethical lapses. They've tried to hide from the GSA scandal, 'Fast and Furious,' politically motivated intelligence leaks and stimulus-funded crony capitalism like Solyndra."

Both Mr. Priebus and Mr. Stearns said they wanted to see a "full scale investigation" into White House staffers' use of personal email addresses and off-site meeting locations. Earlier today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended Mr. Messina by saying he always forwarded official emails from his personal account to his White House address.

"In an effort to comply with all the regulations pertaining to emails, he would forward emails to his White House account or copy his White House account so that those emails would be part of presidential record. And that is per guidance provided by counsel," said Mr. Carney.

Mr. Carney said he and other White House staffers often have meetings "off campus." The White House has also argued House Republicans' interest in the transparency issue is politically motivated.

On the conference call, Mr. Stearns, who complained the White House had been stonewalling attempts to investigate the issue, said there's no proof Mr. Messina forwarded his emails to his official account.

"They say that they CC'd to the White House, but that's their word. We haven't seen the fact that they did CC the White House," Mr. Stearns said. "Theyr'e saying they CC'd the White House, we'd like some corroboration of that fact."

Mr. Priebus said an investigation would help determine whether "a crime" had been committed.

"If you are using your personal email account to forward to yourself to and from the White House in order to make multi-billion dollar deals with lobbyists using taxpayer money, don't you think something smells a little funny here? I sure do," he said. "Certainly there is smoke and smoldering fire here and my suspicion is that there will be a lot more uncovered once an investigation commences."

Initially, when the report about the emails and off-site meetings was released, Mr. Stearns included an accompanying statement saying he was simply pointing out the Obama administration had failed to live up to promises of transparency and he wasn't alleging illegal activity. On the conference call reporters asked Mr. Priebus why he was now suggesting a crime may have been committed. He answered that it was hard to say for certain since the White House hadn't released all the documents requested by the House Republicans.

"I think it's hard to question whether it's illegal because we haven't seen the documents and they haven't complied with our request, whether it be subpoenas or a simple request under the presidential act for freedom of information," said Mr. Priebus. "They have not complied, so we really can't say."

Mr. Priebus said the main issue raised by the report was the president's "hypocrisy."

"If anything, of all the issues here today, it's the Obama hypocrisy that I want to highlight. The fact that he said that he was going to be different than everybody else, that he was going to be the most transparent guy that ever was President of the United States and here we go again," Mr. Priebus said. "The Obama White House is actively deceiving the American people and they're doing it over at Caribou Latte."

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.

Reince Priebus (Photo: Twitter)

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus sent a letter to the comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office yesterday accusing President Barack Obama of inappropriately using government funds to stage campaign events and demanding a "formal inquiry" into the matter.

"Throughout his administration, but particularly in recent weeks, President Obama has been passing off campaign travel as 'official events,' thereby allowing taxpayers, rather than his campaign, to pay for his reelection efforts," Mr. Preibus wrote. "Given the recent excesses, waste, and abuse uncovered in the General Services Administration, the GAO should be particularly sensitive to misuse of taxpayer dollars."

Mr. Priebus cited President Obama's "speeches to cheering crowds of college students" in North Carolina and Colorado yesterday as well as his planned appearance in Iowa today and a recent trip to Florida.

"Please note that President Obama traveled to three states largely considered to be electoral battlegrounds to promote this legislation. One might imagine that if this were genuinely a government event he might have stopped in a non-battleground state like Texas or Vermont," Mr. Priebus wrote.

Mr. Priebus said the president has held "dozens of events" that benefitted his re-election effort during his three-and-a-half years in office.

"It is a pattern of behavior that is worsening," Mr. Priebus wrote. "We request an immediate review of this matter and a formal inquiry into whether this pattern constitutes fraud."

President Obama is due to hold two more rallies in crucial swing states, Ohio and Virginia, on May 5. Being able to push policy messages on the White House's dime has long been cited as an advantage of incumbency in presidential elections. President Obama began his campaign push six weeks later in the election cycle than his predecessor, George W. Bush did during his 2004 re-election effort.

The campaigns of his Republican rivals, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, also receive taxpayer funds in the form of Secret Service protection. Mr. Gingrich's last hurrah on the campaign trail before his planned exit next Tuesday will cost taxpayers an estimated $228,000 for Secret Service protection.

Reince Priebus (Getty)

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is demanding President Obama return $500,000 in campaign contributions Jon Corzine raised on his behalf now that the FBI is reportedly investigating the collapse of Mr. Corzine's hedge fund brokerage, MF Global.
Mr. Priebus released a statement about President Obama's financial relationship with Mr. Corzine, a former New Jersey Governor and Senator, Thursday morning.

"As Obama’s ‘great friend’ and designated ‘Wall Street guy,’ Corzine did much more than give the maximum $5,000 to the Obama campaign: he bundled at least 100 times that much from his Wall Street friends and fellow executives. While the Obama campaign has entertained the idea of returning the $5,000 Corzine gave himself should he be indicted, that’s simply not enough. The entire amount he bundled should be returned immediately," Mr. Priebus said.

MF Global filed for bankruptcy Monday due to heavy losses related to the European debt crisis. Since then, government regulators identified $600 million missing from customer accounts and MF Global has admitted to transferring client cash into the company's coffers in a likely attempt to cover losses. Moving segregated customer funds into company accounts in a potential violation of financial regulations. If MF Global did indeed move customer money into corporate accounts and Mr. Corzine was aware of the practice he could conceivably end up in jail.