Priebus, Wasserman Schultz Arguments Heated, But More Civil

Republican Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Democratic Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared again Sunday for a joint national interview, but ABC "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos successfully dampened the fireworks between the two fierce political rivals.

Instead of allowing the pair to appear on camera at the same time, like CNN did last Sunday, Stephanopoulos avoided a similar shouting match by interviewing each separately, and while they still threw darts at each other, they still made their arguments that their parties would take the Senate heard, with just two days left before the election.

The problem they have is that their message isn't working and our ground game is whipping their ground game," Priebus said. "If you look at Colorado, we're up by 105,000 votes right now. Cory Gardner's tied with women with Mark Udall. We're winning Hispanic voters in Colorado. We're whipping them in Arkansas. We are at a dead even early vote right now in Iowa. We were down by 21,000 votes in Iowa in early vote in 2010. Joni Ernst is up by 7 according to "Des Moines Register" yesterday. We're winning obviously in Montana, West Virginia, South Dakota. I haven't even talked about Alaska, Louisiana, and then we're going to see what's going to happen in North Carolina, New Hampshire."

And if the Americans who want change in the country vote on Tuesday, Priebus said, "we're going to have a great night. And it's because Barack Obama's policies and Debbie Wasserman Schultz's policies and (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid's policies are on the ballot."

But Wasserman Schultz, arguing that President Barack Obama has "taken us from the worst economic crisis we've faced since the Great Depression," complained that "Republican obstructionism has really been a tremendous waste."

And she insisted that the Democrats will hold the Senate, "because we have a ground game that I know Reince would take, ours over theirs, any day of the week."

Further, "we've got early vote numbers that are up in the most competitive states, in the most competitive districts all across the country," she claimed.

And while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul famously said this past week that "the Republican brand sucks" when it comes to getting out the vote, "what he said is that we're actually on the right track and actually we're doing a lot of the things that we should be doing, which is engaging Hispanic voters, black voters, Asian voters," Priebus said Sunday. Republicans, he said, have been  "talking to women across the country, not just for four months before an election, but for four years."

Priebus noted that Republicans are winning the female vote, including Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell being ahead in the polls against Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.

"So Rand Paul is saying what I've been saying, which is we have spent way too long as a national party showing up at the end, and we've got to do better," Priebus said.

Wasserman Schultz, meanwhile, comparing the Democrats' ground game to the Republicans, said she'd "stack up our surrogates" against the Republicans.

"We've got President (Barack) Obama, Vice President (Joe) Biden, Secretary (Hillary) Clinton, President (Bill) Clinton, and they've got Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Ted Cruz," she scoffed.

But Priebus insisted that Democrats are losing the race

"You can just look at early vote, absentee ballot voting, and their message isn't working," he said. "So if they have such a great message about all these things that Debbie is rattling off, then they should be voting across the board, and they are not."

Related stories:

• RNC's Priebus: Dem Strategy to Spread 'False Messages' on GOP Foes
• DNC's Wasserman Schultz Can't Name a Senate Race Where Obama is Campaigning