All Quiet on the Weiner Front

Over the last several days there have been no significant new developments in the Anthony Weiner situation, which thus seems to have settled into a prolonged stalemate: the Democratic leadership still wants him to quit his House seat, he hasn’t agreed to quit his House seat, and no further lewd photographs of the congressman from his online correspondence have been released. Today’s Mail summarizes the current state of play: Weiner has supposedly departed for a treatment center of unknown location; sources are saying that the hope is that Weiner’s wife, home from her latest State Department trip, will persuade him to resign; and the House Democrats held a meeting yesterday (or Monday—it’s hard to tell because of the unclear way the Mail dates its articles) at which Nancy Pelosi repeated her call for Weiner to resign, while she added that (of course) the decision is up to him.

But here’s something disgusting. As reported at Politico, a poll taken last Friday of registered voters in Weiner’s congressional district found that 56 percent want him to remain in office. Since he last won re-election by about that amount, that means that roughly everyone who previously voted for him feels that his demented behavior—including a solid week of lying through his teeth to the national media about a “prank” or a “hack” of his Twitter account—does not disqualify him for office. It’s Clinton all over again. With occasional, extraordinary exceptions (such as the House leadership’s saying that Weiner should resign), the Democrats remain, by and large, the party that believes that all consensual sexual behavior is ok, and that all lying about sexual behavior is ok. Why don’t they just move to France?

UPDATE, June 16: A reader tells me that polls show 70 percent of Americans think Weiner should resign. I haven’t found that poll yet. A poll taken nine days ago showed a majority of New Yorkers thought he should stay, but that was still relatively early in the scandal.

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Mark Jaws writes:

Anthony Weiner is my brother’s Congressman in south Brooklyn, so I am familiar with portions of his district, which are heavily Jewish. So, there may be an element of identity politics here keeping Weiner’s support levels up.

But what moved me to write was your wish that Blue State Democrats simply move to France. I have a better idea. Why don’t we simply divorce ourselves from Blue State America and split the house and the kids? They can have the few remaining white liberal kids and the vast majority of their most beloved black and brown children. We’ll keep the remaining and all of the Asian kids willing to move to our side of the house.

Charles T. writes:

“Why don’t they just move to France?”

I doubt if France wants them.

Jim C. writes:

Weiner’s alter ego:

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 15, 2011 04:58 PM | Send