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Dem Pollster Caddell: GOP Needs Positive Plan to Stay Alive
Monday, April 14, 2014 05:32 PM
By: Greg Richter
A divided Republican Party must come together with a positive plan that offers an alternative to Obamacare and improvements in the economy, or it will face losing power, says former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell.
The 1994 Contract with America swept in GOP majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s, and Caddell said Republicans should offer a similarly united stand for what they will do if voters give them control of Congress again in November.
The Contract with America "gave the sense of the idea of change and unity," Caddell said Monday on Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto."
Republicans think they can win by simply saying "no," but their poll numbers are as bad as Democrats', Caddell said. A Rasmussen poll released Sunday said that only 9 percent of those polled think the country will be better off if all incumbents are re-elected.
"That is a pox on everyone. Somebody's got to step into this vacuum," Caddell said, warning that if Republicans don't do it, they may be in trouble.
"Somebody is going to step forward. Politics abhors a vacuum," Caddell said. "If the Republicans can't be that voice, they may be out."
Democrats at least have control of the White House, and they have a base of special-interest constituencies that hold them together, he said.
"But this is a moment of change," he told Cavuto, "and the question for the Republicans is whether they can change with it."