FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
It's been a bad week for the Republicans. Very bad.
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/02/art.steele.jpg caption="Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele"]
The party of family values and morality started the week addressing revelations of RNC-funded trips to a risqué Hollywood nightclub that features bondage... and finished it off with mailers that mistakenly directed party members to a phone sex hotline.
At a time when Republicans could be capitalizing on dissatisfaction with the Democratic agenda in Washington, particularly health care reform... they're stuck talking about bondage and phone sex.
The RNC says chairman Michael Steele is ordering "substantive changes" to their accounting procedures. This comes after reports the RNC reimbursed a Republican donor almost $2,000 for a night out on the town in Los Angeles.
The evening included a trip to a club where topless dancers mimic sex and bondage acts. Is bondage a family value? Just asking.
It gets better. The RNC unintentionally sent a phone sex number on a fund-raising letter to potential donors. People who tried calling the number were offered "live, one-on-one talk with a nasty girl" for $3 a minute.
These PR nightmares are hurting the party in one of the worst ways possible, financially. The GOP needs to raise a lot of money for the upcoming midterm elections.
But one top social conservative leader... the president of the family research council... is calling on members to stop giving money to the national Republican Party. He says these incidents show the party is "completely tone-deaf" to the values and concerns of party members.
Here’s my question to you: How much do trips to risqué nightclubs and mailers with sex hotline numbers help the Republican Party?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Paul writes:
It's the hypocrisy of it all, Jack. Plain and simple. It's one thing to have an affair; it's another to tell everyone you're a "Promise Keeper" who cares only about family values… and then sneak around tapping on bathroom floors or hiking in Argentina.
Dave in Woodbury, Connecticut writes:
I had always hoped that my party would loosen up a bit. But phone sex, risqué clubs and bondage is a lot more than what I had expected.
Brian in Boise, Idaho writes:
Jack, At least it's better than getting busted exchanging homosexual text messages with underage boys or buying meth from gay prostitutes. In fact, over the past ten years, strip clubs and phone sex hotlines are some of the most promising signs I've seen of the Republican Party moving in the right direction.
Mike in California writes:
Family values and conservatism… kind of like Palin's then 16-year-old daughter getting pregnant? How's that "abstinency thingie working for ya?" Really, if the Republicans would just drop the "holier than thou" moniker they like to brandish and just admit they are ordinary, mistake-prone people like everyone else, they might actually be liked more.
Drew writes:
How can Republicans be intellectually honest and claim it's bad for gay Americans to want to settle down and get married, then turn around and get caught engaging in heterosexual licentiousness? Makes you wonder about the moral standards of the self-proclaimed party of "Family Values."
Greg writes:
Jack, The answer is so obvious: The Republicans are going to bondage clubs because they don't feel like they got their butts whipped hard enough in the last election!