Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus pushed back against former presidential candidate Bob Dole’s recent remarks that Ronald Reagan “couldn’t have made it” in today’s GOP, and Dole’s suggestion that “they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that say ‘closed for repairs’ until New Year’s Day next year.”

“I would say that we’re not closed for repairs, but we’re open for repairs,” Priebus said, noting the RNC’s post-election autopsy, the Growth and Opportunity Project, which was published earlier this year. “That’s the Republican party that needs to grow, that needs to win presidential elections, and [that] needs to be a year-round, permanent operation, which is what we’re building.”

He pointed out that the party’s problems are hardly a recent phenomenon, and that its last two (failed) presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and John McCain, seemed to undermine Dole’s suggestion that the GOP needed more moderates. “If we’re being honest about it, we haven’t decisively won in 24 years,” Priebus said. ”This is not something that suddenly happened, but it is something that the national party, the Republican party, et al., have to address, which we did.”

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