Hookers and Blow: Welcome to the RNC

Posted by Brave New Films, ABC News at 10:55 AM on September 2, 2008.

From thedailyphosdex:


Thanks are in order to RawStory.com for bringing to the world's attention and enlightenment this ABC News item about a rather lurid and tasteless party in connection with the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities as is attracting the ire of "Secular-Progressive" bloggers.

Let RawStory.com elaborate thus:

Despite John McCain's request over the weekend that the Republican convention be toned down in light of the threat posed by Hurricane Gustav, Republican delegates and their lobbyist friends continued to party the night away -- and Democratic bloggers were delighted by the spectacle.

ABC correspondent Brian Ross reported on several of the more flamboyant revels, including one Saturday night GOP party in honor of the convention president where pink spotlights, pink boas, and pink wigs were the order of the day. When Ross tried to corner Republican officials and ask them about the appropriateness of partying as Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans, they either fled, hid behind their pink boas, or simply shrugged and said, "Everybody goes through hard times."

Even after John McCain announced that the convention was being toned down, the National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin, and the American Trucking Associations sponsored a Sunday night party at a downtown bar -- with a band called "Hookers and Blow" -- hosted by former Tom DeLay aide Glenn LeMunyon.

GOP House Deputy Whip Bill Shuster was there at a table of lobbyists and Capitol Hill staffers and told Ross, "I have no hesitation" about coming to the party, adding that the lobbyist he was sitting with "is a friend of mine, I've known him for twenty years." Despite the glitz, concluded Ross, "this was all about business -- the behind-the-scenes business of influence and power."

Democratic blogs have not been shy about ripping the GOP for its indulgences. Although many merely posted the ABC video with such brief comments as "Thank you, Republicans, for just handing the Democrats the election" or "You get the feeling nobody in GOP politics really gives a damn about McCain," a few were more scathing.

One blog headlined the video, "McCain asks for 'only absolutely essential business' at the convention. Delegates decide parties are absolutely essential."

FireDogLake wrote that "given McCain's selection of the scandal-beset Sarah Palin for Vice President, the last thing his campaign wanted was the image of a heartless, indifferent group of blindingly white people dancing the night away while the South struggled with yet another natural disaster. So the McCain campaign handed down a stern edict: 'No celebrating!' This is what they got instead."

Finally, one blog suggested more tartly, "Some raised money, but the fundraising activities of others were most decidedly not directed at disaster relief. Unless, of course, you're referring to the loss of Republican Power in America."

Which, if anything, ought to arouse the ire and indignation of Right-Thinking Americans still deluded into supporting the McCain/Palin ticket as one with G-d, Country and Family.

(In case you need some historical insight, consider the irony-laden gaffe of 1884's Republican Presidential candidate James G. Blaine: Shortly after making the remark that the Democrats were "the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion," he subsequently made his way to the snug of Delmonico's Restaurant in New York to dine in the company of prominent and powerful bankers, businessmen and industrialists--a gathering quickly dismissed in the press of the time as "Belshazzar's Feast," taking note of the hypocrisy that Blaine saw himself as the champion of the working classes while consorting himself with "the Four Hundred" soon afterwards.

The news would be enough to sway the vote to Democratic candidate Chester A. Arthur.)

======================

Just a reminder: Readers (and online shoppers) always wanted @ The Exaggerator; make no mistake about it.

Tagged as: republicans, gop, john mccain, 2008 election, abc news, lockheed martin, st. paul, debauchery, belshazzar's feast, hookers and blow, national rifle associatio, american trucking associa, hurricane gustav