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One year ago, a frank Republican Party assessment of why it came up short in the 2012 presidential election included a stark recommendation.

Embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform, the post-mortem authors urged, or get used to a party whose appeal "will continue to shrink to its core constituents only."

That bold assertion was decidedly offstage Monday, as the party orchestrated a full-on media effort to mark advances it says it's made as a result of recommendations contained in the 2013 Growth and Opportunity Project report.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus pointed to successes over the past 12 months including improved data collection, new state-level staffers more involved in minority communities, and a rejiggering of the presidential primary, debate and convention schedules calendar changes designed to condense the season and not leave the eventual nominee so battered.

The party has already moved the start of its primary season to February, its convention to late June or early July, and is working to limit the number of candidate debates.

Glenn McCall, a committee member from South Carolina and one of five co-authors of the 2013 "autopsy," said that the party had heard the message that "we were not showing up."

McCall, who is African-American, said that he has seen "solid progress, and comprehensive progress" in terms of party field workers going to "communities where we've never gone before."

Sally Bradshaw, a Florida committee member and report co-author, said some of the progress the party has made on the digital and data front helped Republican candidate David Jolly win a Florida special election last week for a vacant congressional seat.

The victory over Democrat Alex Sink, Bradshaw said, was in part due to a new canvassing app developed by the national committee that provided voter log lists and other data fed directly to the RNC.

But it was clear during an RNC-arranged media call that party leaders wanted to avoid an issue that has pitted electorally pragmatic GOP members against a right flank that has blocked immigration reform in the U.S. House especially at a time when the Democratic Party is struggling for a midterm issue and faces losing control of the Senate this fall.

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After party 'autopsy,' GOP touts progress