January 31, 2010 06:14 PM UTC

Pat Caddell Opens New Phase of Romanoff "PUMA" Insurgency

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• by: Colorado Pols

(Bumped into Monday by popular demand – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Friday, the campaign of Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff announced several new hires with a national footprint–strategist Joe Trippi of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, Celinda Lake, most recently having served as the pollster for Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, Liz Chadderdon, a direct-mail campaign consultant, and Pat Caddell, a former pollster for President Jimmy Carter and FOX News contributor.

All four of these new staffers have a long history in Democratic politics, but not all of them can point to an especially positive history–at least not in the recent past. Mr. Trippi hasn’t had a lot of success to point to since the 2004 Dean campaign, more recently managing the spectacularly unsuccessful John Edwards: though he has a reputation as one of the most expensive Democratic consultants out there. Can Romanoff afford this guy?

Trippi was also roundly criticized last summer for engaging in “sock puppetry,” with his staff registering numerous accounts on a prominent blog to flood it with commentary favorable to Trippi’s clients (our understanding, for the record, is that Trippi was not involved with Romanoff’s campaign last December when much more abusive behavior occurred here). Celinda Lake’s last gig as Martha Coakley’s pollster is not exactly what you’d call resume-headlining. Liz Chadderdon has done good work for Democratic candidates, but also has made many appearances as the “token” Democrat on FOX News, where she freely concedes “I’m getting the tar kicked out of me.”

They’re not “A-list” consultants, at least not anymore, though they do mark a step up in terms of competency from Ken Gordon and other locals Romanoff was listening to last year as his campaign floundered. Trippi, Lake, and to a lesser extent Chadderdon bring skills as well as baggage to the table–but at least they have experience playing at the level of a U.S. Senate race.

“Democratic” strategist Pat Caddell, though, represents something else entirely.

Pat Caddell, nominally a Democrat, is well-known as an on-air pundit for the FOX News Channel. Though represented as a counterbalance to Republicans he appears opposite, Caddell ruthlessly attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry during the 2004 elections–even going so far as to defend the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and claim that Democratic questions about the military service record of then-President George W. Bush reflected “the anger that’s killing my party.” Appearing on the O’Reilly Factor in the spring of 2004, Caddell famously remarked that “I think that John Kerry would have a hard time making a case he’d be better on [terrorism] than President Bush.” Caddell has claimed, among other things, that “Democratic corruption is much worse than the Republican corruption.” In 2003, Caddell asserted to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that President Bush’s infamous ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech aboard an aircraft carrier “sounded like the kind of PR stunt that Bill Clinton would pull. But and then I saw it. And you know, there’s a real — there’s a real affection between him and the troops.”

More recently, Caddell has appeared regularly on FOX News’ Glenn Beck Show, and other FOX shows, attacking basically everything the administration of Barack Obama has done since taking office. Criticizing Obama’s advocacy for Chicago’s failed Olympic bid, Caddell told Beck “in Chicago, what we’re going to have is gangster politics that will make Al Capone so happy. We are going — this is the biggest outrage ever done.”

Here’s Caddell on Beck’s show from December of last year, celebrating the results of polling showing the popularity of “Tea Party” candidates, disparaging health care reform reform as ‘pay now maybe benefit later,’ cap-and-trade as “gangster politics” (apparently he likes this term) and his conclusion–“The American people are coming for you, Congress.” Glenn Beck, by the way, agrees:

Folks, we could go on and on, the record is full of examples of Caddell harshly disparaging Democratic candidates, the Democratic party, and President Obama on a broad range of issues. It’s obviously great material for the FOX News Channel, you can see why Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck love this guy–somebody who defends “swiftboaters” and calls cap-and-trade “gangster politics” they can still call a “Democrat” is a valuable asset.

But what kind of advice will this man give Andrew Romanoff? Does Romanoff agree with Caddell, for example, that health reform is a bad deal for the American people? Does Romanoff agree with Caddell that cap-and-trade is “gangster politics putting a gun to Congress’ head?” Or that former President Bush had a better record on terrorism than John Kerry? Or that “Democratic corruption is much worse than Republican corruption?”

We kind of doubt that Romanoff would agree with many of those sentiments, but unfortunately, they are part of his campaign now. Romanoff has aligned himself with one of Democratic Party’s principal detractors, a man whose views most Democratic primary voters will find absolutely repellent, and whose greatest claim to fame is his willingness to engage in the wanton disparagement of “fellow” Democrats in the service of Glenn Beck.

That is truly stunning, but given the direction Romanoff’s campaign has been headed over the last few weeks, tapping this kind of “PUMA” angst may be the only thing he has left. Caddell’s hiring betrays a willingness by Romanoff, at long last, to do anything he believes might level this increasingly lopsided contest–even at the expense of fellow Democrats, and his own credibility.

Because we have said repeatedly that Andrew Romanoff, despite a litany of bad choices in this quixotic, self-absorbed Senate campaign, has a bright future in Colorado politics if he can somehow put a stop to the damage he is self-inflicting, we are genuinely disappointed to see this.