Free Republic

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. -snip- Without directly taking on Romney, Republican National Committee member Morton Blackwell, from Virginia, joined Caddell in criticizing the practice of many campaigns of allowing consultants to take a commission when they score media placements, which skews the campaign’s efforts away from grassroots efforts and direct contacts with voters...

"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.""

Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Wednesday 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 left no doubt...

... The big deal is that when Steve Schmidt and Mike Murphy sit down on the sets of liberal television shows and bash Rush Limbaugh and what Schmidt calls "the conservative entertainment complex" -- meaning talk radio and Fox News -- they wind up sharply illustrating the GOP's real problem. The real problem is people like Schmidt and Murphy. The real problem is the fact they and so many GOP others make their well-paid livings catering to exactly what the "conservative entertainment complex" spends all of its time fighting: the "political consultant-big government complex." Schmidt and Murphy are the political...