Barack Obama's use of the US-UK state dinner as a re-election campaign prop was vulgar and insulting

A few days ago I wrote a piece outlining why the US visit by the British Prime Minister was being used by the White House as a campaign prop in Barack Obama's bid for re-election in November. The decision to whisk David Cameron off to a heavily televised college basketball game in Ohio, which just happens to be a crucial swing state, was both manipulative and demeaning, and should have been vetoed by Cameron’s advisers as inappropriate in an election year. But the use of an official state dinner at the White House to reward major campaign donors is even worse.

As Devin Dwyer at ABC News revealed last night (hat tip: Matt Drudge):

More than three dozen of President Obama’s top re-election campaign financiers are guests at tonight’s White House state dinner in honor of British Prime Minister David Cameron.

They include Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, media mogul Fred Eychaner, Pfizer executive Sally Susman, Stoneyfield Farms president and CEO Gary Hirschberg, and Microsoft executives Suzi Levine and John Frank. Several have each raised more than half a million dollars for 2012, according to estimates provided by Obama’s campaign.

All told, 41 of the 364 expected attendees are Obama campaign bundlers, or volunteer fundraisers who give the legal maximum and then gather checks from friends and colleagues who do the same.

The group attending the dinner tonight is responsible for at least $10.7 million of the roughly $250 million Obama and Democrats have amassed for the election cycle so far.

The full state dinner guest list can be viewed here.

A state dinner with the British PM should be a celebration of the US-UK Special Relationship, and not a reward ticket for hugely wealthy fundraisers who have given large sums of money to the president’s re-election campaign. David Cameron has been shamelessly used by a cynical White House that has cared little for the Anglo-American alliance in its first three years in office before rolling out the red carpet this week. It is disrespectful towards the leader of America’s closest friend and ally, as well as an abuse of presidential power.