His [Pat Caddell's] comments call to mind an old saying from playwright David Mamet: “If you’re in the con game and you don’t know who the mark is, you’re the mark.”
Autopsy 2012: Blame the Consultants? - John Fund - National Review Online
CPAC headliners urge the GOP to rethink how it uses paid “experts.”
March 18, 2013 by John Fund
For as long as he’s been president, Barack Obama, has been the top target for attack at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. D.C. But this year, there may have been a close second: the Republican political-consultant class, which many CPAC attendees blame for the party’s poor 2012 showing.
...
But Pat Caddell, a Democratic consultant and former pollster for such presidential candidates as Jimmy Carter, Jerry Brown, and Gary Hart, left the most blood on the floor. He headlined a CPAC panel the title of which left no one guessing: “Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?”
“The Republican party is in the grips of the CLEC — the consultant, lobbyist, and establishment complex,” he began. He described CLEC as a self-serving, interlocked network of Beltway bandits for whom success in securing large fees trumps achieving political victories.
“In my party, we play to win,” Caddell said. “You people play for a different kind of agenda.” He acknowledged that Democrats had their own incestuous interconnections but insisted that Republicans have a bigger problem when it comes to self-dealing. “When Democratic consultants fail, they get sent to the minors until their win-loss rate improves,” he told me afterward. “I don’t see that happening with GOP consultants often enough. They fail upwards.” ...
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