TAMPA, Fla. — MSNBC host Chris Matthews lashed out at Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus this morning, accusing Mitt Romney and the Republican Party of playing the “race card” against President Barack Obama by joking about his birth certificate and running “dishonest” ads about Obama’s stance on welfare.

The attack, an unbridled outburst even by MSNBC standards, clearly rankled co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. But RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer, who described Matthews’s ideas as “outlandish,” said it will not prevent Priebus from going on the network again.

“The chairman is going to continue to reach out to all audiences where we can make the case on why we need to elect Mitt Romney,” Spicer told POLITICO. “As far as ‘Morning Joe’ goes, Mika and Joe have a great show, and we would definitely look forward to going on again. Chuck Todd, who does ‘The Daily Rundown’ right afterward, also has a great show.”

“The chairman can obviously handle himself, but it’s another thing to have a monologue-slash-filibuster filled with outlandish ideas. Every reporter I’ve spoken with says Matthews was off his rocker this morning,” Spicer continued. “But ‘Morning Joe,’ Chuck Todd — a lot of the political press corps watches them. This was just one guest that was inappropriate.”

Matthews’s attack against Priebus was the latest in a string of rants that the MSNBC personality has given this year, signaling that he has no problem using his 5 o’clock program as a platform to play the highly opinionated attack dog. But today’s heated exchange saw Matthews hijacking the conversation from a bipartisan panel and signaled the risks MSNBC takes when it lets its unabashedly liberal prime-time programming infiltrate its morning programming.

At the end of the exchange, Priebus finally conceded, “I’m not going to get into this argument with Chris.”

When Matthews — who had no intention of letting the chairman get a word in — shot back, “Because you’re losing, that’s why,” it was in keeping with the playground bickering that had characterized his entire attack.

“Garbage. Garbage,” Priebus said.

UPDATE (4:54 p.m.): More from Priebus at today’s press gaggle (h/t NRO):

When someone wants to grab the flag and try to be the biggest jerk in the room, sometimes you just let them go…. We shook hands, but I will tell ya that someone from MSNBC, I don’t know if it’s a producer or somebody, has been trying to call us all day – I’m sure it’s to make amends, but there’s nothing to make amends [about]. When somebody wants to take the prize of being the biggest jerk in the room, … I mean, he made the case for us. This is the Barack Obama surrogate of 2012. This is what they’re all about. They’re going to be about division, they’re going to be about distraction. And I’ve got to tell you, the brand of Barack Obama, hope and change and bringing us all together, it’s completely broken. When people come to realize that you’re not real anymore, you’re not who you said you were, that’s a big problem for Barack Obama.