(Breitbart) –
Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered
Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Thursday
with a blistering attack on “racketeering” Republican consultants who play
wealthy donors like “marks.”
“I blame the
donors who allow themselves to be played for marks. I blame the people in the
grassroots for allowing themselves to be played for suckers….It’s time to stop
being marks. It’s time to stop being suckers. It’s time for you people to get
real,” he told the audience that included two top Republican consultants.
Caddell stole
the show as a panelist in the breakout session titled “Should We Shoot All the
Consultants Now?” He spoke with a fire and passion that electrified the room.
When the session began the large room was half filled, but as word spread of the
fireworks going on inside, the audience streamed in. By the end, it was
standing room only.
Breitbart News
spoke with Caddell prior to his talk, and he promised he would deliver a
“brutal critique” of the Republican establishment and its political consulting
class. He did not disappoint, pulling no punches with an unyielding
evisceration of a small group of Republican consultants, the Romney campaign,
the Republican National Committee, and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS Super PAC.
“When you have
the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political
director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $150 million at
the end of the campaign for the ‘fantastic’ get-out-the-vote program…some of
this borders on RICO [the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
Act] violations,” Caddell told the crowd. “It’s all self dealing going on. I
think it works on the RICO thing. They’re in the business of lining their
pockets.”
“The Republican
Party,” Caddell continued, “is in the grips of what I call the CLEC–the
consultant, lobbyist, and establishment complex.” Caddell described CLEC as a
self serving interconnected network of individuals and organizations interested
in preserving their own power far more than they’re interested in winning
elections.
“Just follow
the money,” Caddell told a rapt audience. “It’s all there in the newspaper. The
way it works is this–ever since we centralized politics in Washington, the
House campaign committee and the Senate campaign committee, they decide
who they think should run. You hire these people on the accredited list [they
say to candidates] otherwise we won’t give you money. You hire my friend or
else.”
Financial
corruption is a key component of the current process, according to Caddell.
“There’s money passing under the table on both parties. Don’t kid yourself…If
you can’t see racketeering in front of you, God save you.”
As a Democrat,
Caddell said he could tell the truth about the failings of the Republicans 2012
campaign efforts since “I have no interest in the Republican Party.” He
compared Republicans unfavorably to Democrats.”In my party we play to win. We
play for life and death. You people play for a different kind of agenda…Your
party has no problem playing the Washington Generals to the Harlem
Globetrotters.”
Caddell left no
doubt he is not an admirer of Mitt Romney’s campaign management skills. He
called Romney “the worst executive I’ve seen” when it comes to leading a
political campaign. Romney’s failure to attack Obama’s Benghazi debacle
during the foreign policy debate was “cravenness” that came about because his
consultants told him “we don’t want to look warlike.”
Caddell also
said Romney failed to back his campaign with his own money when it was most
needed. “My question for Romney is, you spent $45 million [of your own money]
in your 2008 campaign where you didn’t have a chance. Why didn’t you give your
campaign a loan in the spring instead of letting Obama define you?”
Romney, Caddell
said, was not on top of his game when he failed to anticipate attacks based on
his business career. “You didn’t know Bain was coming? Ted Kennedy used it
against you.” Romney lost to Ted Kennedy in the 1994 Senate election in
Massachusetts.
Caddell was
equally caustic in his evaluation of the Republican consultants who managed
Romney’s campaign. “Of course this election could have been won. It
should have been won,” he said. “The Romney campaign was the worst campaign in
my lifetime except for ninety minutes [in the first debate] thanks to Barack
Obama.”
“There was a
failure of strategy, a failure of tactics, a massive failure of messaging. Most
of all there was a total failure of imagination.” Caddell singled out Stuart
Stevens, a key figure in Romney’s campaign, in a particularly withering
critique. “Stevens had as much business running a campaign as I do sprouting
wings and flying out of this room,” he said to an audience that applauded.
Caddell said
that Romney inexplicably allowed Obama to define him without fighting back. If
Obama had a 50% favorable rating on election day, he had an 80% chance of
winning. If he had a 45% favorable rating on election day, he had a 90% chance
of losing. On election day, Obama’s favorable rating was 51% because, Caddell
said, “Republicans failed to hold him down.”
“A majority of
the people wanted to repeal Obamacare, [an issue that] the Republican Party
abandoned,” Caddell noted. He added that “on the issue of bigger or smaller
government, one-third of the people who want smaller government voted for
Obama.”
Caddell
criticized the RNC’s planned announcement on Monday of the RNC’s Growth and
Opportunity Project report, which he dismissed as “this whitewash…being
produced at the RNC. You can not have the people who failed responsible for
finding the solution.”
Caddell
predicted that the Republican Party, unless it became the anti-establishment,
anti-Washington party, would become extinct, like the 19th century Whig Party.
“These people [in the consulting-lobbying-establishment complex] are doing
business for themselves. They are a part of the Washington establishment. These
people don’t want to have change.”
The 2010
takeover of Congress by the Republicans, Caddell said, “was not engineered by
the Washington Republican establishment. They [the establishment] then took
that victory and threw it away.”
Caddell called
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “the Ambrose Burnside of American
politics.” Burnside was the commander of the Union’s Army of the Potomac during
the Civil War. He was dismissed by Lincoln for his inability to press his advantage
against the enemy, his plodding and unimaginative strategies, and his inability
to focus resources on the tactics needed for victory.
Caddell
cautioned Republicans not to read too much in the 2012 results where they
maintained control of the House of Representatives. “You won the House [in
2012] because of the reapportionment that came after the 2010 [Tea Party]
victories,” he said. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), elected in 2010, and Senator
Ron Johnson (R-WI), elected in 2012, had to fight this establishment at every
step in the process and “claw their way” to electoral success, Caddell said.
When an
audience member asked Caddell why he, a Democrat, was offering Republicans
advice that would help them beat his own party, his response was met with huge
applause. “I’m not a fan of Barack Obama,” Caddell said. “My first allegiance
is to my country. I have paid a huge price, and when I watch you people
screwing up I’m offended.”
Nancy Smith, a
grassroots activist who co-founded an independent Virginia group that
focused on door-to-door canvassing and get-out-the-vote in the 2012 election,
was effusive in her praise of Caddell’s critique. “This talk by Caddell is what
this entire conference should be about.”
The panel was
moderated by Matt Schlapp, a principal at Cove Strategies, a Republican
political consulting firm. In addition to Caddell, the panel included Jeff Roe,
the founder of Axiom Strategies, also a Republican political consulting firm,
Morton Blackwell, a Republican National Committeeman from Virginia and founder
of the Leadership Institute, and Brian Baker, founder of a Super PAC.
Comments:
We wondered why the GOP didn’t go after voter fraud. We wondered why Romney never said anything
bad about the Indonesian Marxist President in the Whitehouse or where the extra
$ trillion a year is really going. We
wondered why we couldn’t get Romney yard signs and then had to pay for them.
I hope Caddell’s accusations turn into grand jury inquiries
and if valid, turn into indictments, criminal charges and jail time, or at
least a bunch of law suits to end the ban on fighting to end the voter fraud
and holding military absentee ballots until after the election is called. We
need to sue the State officers for that one as well.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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