Democratic Congressional Leaders have been steadily backing away from Anthony Weiner over the past week. In the last 24 hours, they've turned tail and broken into full-on sprints --
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday called for an ethics investigation into Rep. Anthony Weiner's admission that he held inappropriate online relationships with half a dozen women over three years. "I am deeply disappointed and saddened about this situation; for Anthony's wife, Huma, his family, his staff and his constituents," Pelosi said in a written statement.
The embarrassing scandal inevitably raised the question of whether the career of a politician -- even one as skilled as many thought Weiner was -- could survive it. A quick poll of New York politicos and D.C. pundits found few saying he could. But they also noted a geopolitical factor that worked to his advantage: This is New York -- stranger things have happened.
And it doesn't really seem like New Yorkers are in a forgiving mood:
A new SurveyUSA poll taken yesterday finds that by a 46 percent to 41 percent plurality, people living in New York City say Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY, should resign rather than remain in office, with an additional 13 percent unsure. But the numbers in favor of resignation in Weiner's own congressional district are likely higher, because it is less heavily Democratic than the city at large.
That plurality could swell to an outright, or even overwhelming, majority when people start reading the transcripts. I honestly don't even feel comfortable excerpting any of that content here -- click through with a heavy content warning. Here's a snippet of the New York Post'swrite-up:
Just when you didn't think it could get worse, new X-rated text messages were made public today where Rep. Anthony Weiner got down and dirty with one of the women he had befriended on Facebook -- even telling her that he was prepared to travel to Nevada to bed her.
In a series of dirty chat messages dating back to Sept. 17, 2010, the kinky Weiner wrote to 40-year-old Lisa Weiss -- a Nevada blackjack dealer who went back and forth with Weiner on Facebook for more than a year -- that he was interested in meeting her.
REP. WEINER: I'm going to -- I'll leave it to someone else. I mean, all I can do is give you the facts as I've laid out in my statement. I know I didn't -- I never met these women, and I know I never really had much desire to, and to me, it was -- it was, you know, almost a frivolous exchange among friends; that I don't think I made an important enough distinction about how hurtful it was and how inappropriate it was. And I -- and I certainly do.
If you are willing to brave the transcripts, you'll discover that it was abundantly clear that Weiner actually professed a rather strong desire to meet up for certain explicit extracurricular activities. What were those insiders saying about "slim," again?
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