The Real Frat Boys Of Orange County

by digby

An Orange County Republican blog reports that the RNC booze and bondage party at Voyeurs was actually a big event to lure youthful donors:

The O.C. connection? As the Daily Caller story in that second link shows, DMI President and Gen Next member, Erik Brown, was who picked up that tab and ended up expensing it to the RNC. According to sources who were in attendance that night, the “official” part of the evening started with 50+ person dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, then carried on throughout the evening, eventually ending up at Voyeur. While RNC employees, who were in town to recruit members to its “RNC Young Eagles” program, did participate throughout the entire evening and did find their way to the bondage-themed club, Michael Steele himself was “not in attendance” for any portion of the evening. Brown, by the way, is reportedly a “Young Eagle” himself, a fundraising sub-group of the RNC which targets larger donors based on age group. Presumably, the Daily Caller (which broke this whole story on its website earlier today) is continuing to pour through RNC disclosure documents. If so, it will likely find significant sums spent by the RNC on services rendered by DMI; not only do local politicos report that Brown liked to brag about his ties to this and other state-wide and national organizations and campaigns, but it would seem consistent with someone who would think he could get away with running through such a large expense.

He did get away with it. The party paid the expense, after all. It was only the press looking into it that exposed it.

It’s fairly crude for the party of family values to do this at any time, but it’s particularly distasteful spend this kind of money on strippers when the state of California is suffering from 12 and half percent unemployment and the whole state infrastructure is coming down around our ears. Not that they care, of course. But they usually pretend.

I suppose they can always say they were “stimulating the economy” — but “trickle down” doesn’t look so good in this particular context.

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