In the face of news that women are deserting the Republican Party in disgust, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is brushing the whole issue aside and calling it as fictional as a war on caterpillars.

Which are you going to believe: the countless forced ultrasound bills, the “fetal pain” bills and “personhood” bills, the attacks on Planned Parenthood, the attacks on contraception, Rush Limbaugh’s nasty misogyny … or Reince Preibus’s transparent attempt to spin it all away?

“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend. “It’s a fiction.”

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and fellow party leaders have been hammering Republicans for supporting policies such as requiring women seeking abortions to get an ultrasound.

“The jury of women across America have ruled that the Republicans have been unbelievably extreme and out of touch and hyper-focused on cultural issues,” Wasserman Schultz said on “Political Capital.” That’s reflected in polling showing President Barack Obama beating former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney or other Republican presidential contenders by 18 points, she said. That gender gap showed up in a survey of swing states published April 2 by USA Today/Gallup.

The Republican Party’s war on women is absolutely real, of course — and so is the growing desperation of people like Priebus, because they know their focus on destroying women’s rights has turned into a huge disaster for their party. As it should.