Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says if he had made the same tasteless domestic-violence cracks uttered by his Democratic counterpart, the media would have pounced on him.
"Believe me, if I would've said something like that obviously it would've been a forest fire and people would've gone crazy," Priebus said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"Most folks in the media … swept this thing under the rug."
Last week, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman
Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, gave "women the back of his hand" by signing a law to stop victims of employment discrimination from seeking punitive and compensatory damages.
"I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality," Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, said at the Milwaukee Athletic Club. She later apologized, telling CBS News, "I shouldn't have used the words I used."
Her remarks were "incendiary," according to Preibus.
"It's the type of stuff that desperate people say that think they're pushing the envelope cleverly. But then end up setting their own trap because they're not thinking ahead," he said.
"Here you have the national chairman, on the DNC side, coming into Wisconsin expecting to be helpful, [and she] ends up leaving and causing days of problems for the candidates she was trying to help.
"All because she was so desperate in distorting the truth that she couldn't help herself."
Priebus also weighed in on what he believes is the "jaw-dropping" lack of strategy on how the Obama administration plans to deal with the Islamic State, which is slaughtering Christians in Iraq and has beheaded two American journalists.
"It is an amazingly, aloof president who's bizarrely unattached to his daily job. I don't think anyone can figure it out, including a lot of Democrats now," Priebus said.
"He can't define anything. It's a real tragedy what's going on. Boy, we can sure use some leadership right now.
"We are conservative Republicans fighting in this country, but I got to tell you nobody here wants to see a weak American president. I don't care if he's a Democrat or Barack Obama.
People in this country want a strong American president and he has not been that."
The president will address the nation on Wednesday night on the nation's strategy to destroy the Islamic extremist group.
Priebus said a guiding principle in American politics, once articulated by President Ronald Reagan, is peace through strength.
"We know that a peaceful world requires a strong America. It’s sort of a foundational position we can all embrace," he said.
"People are seeing the effects of Obama's policies both here and abroad and it's not working. It's not even just not working, it's tragic. It's beyond not working."
He urged Americans to "make some big changes" in the Democrat-controlled Senate in the upcoming midterm elections.
"We need to recommit ourselves to the constitution and the Bill of Rights and a strong defense. What we're seeing is the size of government, the ineffectiveness of government is overtaking American society," he said.
"It is an issue that is going to be resonating at the ballot box in November, which is saying a lot actually because those are big topics and concepts that a lot of times in polling you don't see them bubbling up to the top because they seem theoretical. They're really happening and people get it."
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