Moe Lane

Which is to say, they have the Republican candidate in NY-09′s special election (Bob Turner) being comfortable enough to say stuff like this – about himself:

“Suddenly,” Mr. Turner said of voters, “they are faced with the most brilliant, dynamic, charismatic, Scott Brownesque candidate,” referring to the Massachusetts senator. Or, he added, people are so angry with the president “that they can put up some tired old guy with no political experience and he could actually win.”

“You can pick your poison,” he said. “I suspect that behind it is a great deal of discontent in the district.”

I imagine so, myself. It’s still a tough district to win for the GOP… but oddly enough, Democratic voters in NY-09 apparently may not be pleased with a political party whose members have been known to forward pictures of their genitalia to young women. Much like Republican voters in NY-26 apparently were not pleased with a political party whose members have been known to advertise (shirtless, no less) for adultery on Craigslist.  But when you put it that way then people find it harder to find a deeper meaning in any random Congressional election.

Bob is running in the special election called to replace Rep. Weiner after, well, delicacy prohibits me from finishing that sentence in the way that it deserves. Anyway, the election in question is next month, and is already surprisingly close, this early out.  Turner’s Democratic opponent David Weprin is only leading 48/42 in the latest Siena poll, which frankly demonstrates a startlingly weak lead in a district that Siena found to be 61% Democratic: couple that with Turner getting both Ed Koch’s and Rudy Giuliani’s endorsement, and we have ourselves a race here.  We talked about that a bit:

Bob’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

And why you should care.

It all started when I decided to drink some of the pain of the Activist Left.

I was reading Mickey Kaus – who himself is no slouch when it comes to despising the activists that have essentially destroyed his current and my former party – when he linked to this in-retrospect-unfortunate Tweet by Kos referencing dKos’ rather embarrassingly wrong conspiracy theory about what was going on with Anthony Weiner and pictures of his genitalia*. Tasty, tasty spinning of what was in the end a straightforward, if sordid situation involving a Congressman with too much of a sense of entitlement… but I kind of wanted to see some more wrongheadedness. I freely admit it: there is schadenfreude involved here; I’m not yet a Buddha.

Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of tags you can do things like search for related stories, so I clicked on the #twitterhoax tag. No entries show up. So I scroll down to the search function, punch in ‘twitterhoax,’ and discover that ‘#twitterhoax’ brings back 14 entries, and ‘twitterhoax‘ brings back 1. But none of the ‘#twitterhoax’ entries can actually be called up, while the ‘twitterhoax’ one can be. In other words, an entire set of (embarrassingly wrong) stories just happen to have had their tags not working. (more…)

Alternative title: ‘Weiner pulls out.’

Unconfirmed as of yet, but it’s honestly the only option that the man has at this point, especially since his own party was publicly throwing him under the bus. Presumably somebody offered him a sufficiently lucrative golden parachute.

Moving along, let us first get the obligatory parting shot out of the way…

…as you might have guessed from the picture and the subtitle, there is a strict upper limit to the amount of sympathy that I – or my colleagues at RedState – are going to show towards soon-to-be-former Rep. Weiner for not only his transgressions, but his rather transparent attempts to cover them up. For that matter, the kind of commentary and tone that he’s demonstrated in the past means that he richly deserved the slow-motion destruction of his life, career, and personal dreams over the last few weeks. But Weiner’s supposedly got a kid coming, so I will say this: take this opportunity to revisit your life choices, Tony. You can still salvage your family from the wreck. You want to do that.

Because, really, at this point you have nothing else left. (more…)

If you have ever wondered why the GOP leadership’s first instinct in time of scandal* is to immediately jettison the offenders (whether they like it or not)… well, there’s a reason for that: it rarely gets better if you let things fester.  Case in point… Politico reports that a Democratic caucus Tuesday devolved into a bit of a screaming match; Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey felt obligated to chastise Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania over the latter’s call for Weiner’s resignation.  Pascrell has appointed himself as Weiner’s unofficial defender, which means that he apparently feels entitled to dictate to others (especially, well, female others) what is or is not an acceptable response to Weiner’s poor life choices.

Anyway, it got so bad that they had to send the aides out of the room, lest they gossip and leak – which didn’t help, of course.  It never does.  What does help in these cases is clear-headed pragmatism and the moral courage to accept a bit of pain now to avoid more pain later… which is why the Democrats are still in this mess (they haven’t even stripped this guy of his committees yet!), because their leadership is apparently incapable of either.  It’s enough to make an outside observer want to give two for flinching. (more…)

A simple question, with teeth in it:

The Anthony Weiner scandal has created a dilemma for female Democrats who are turned on by his politics but turned off by his sexual shenanigans.

…Why?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Via JammieWearingFool, via Hot Air.

You remember how you went on CNN to attack Andrew about the ludicrous, oh so ludicrous suggestion that Anthony Weiner might have been having private digital conversations with teenagers? You know, this attack:
“This is the silliest little thing.”

Well, it’s also the funniest thing! The Delaware police are now looking into Anthony Weiner’s… private digital conversations with a teenager! Which Weiner is totally admitting happening! Just like Weiner admitted to everything else that Andrew claimed that Weiner did, and that you tried to dismiss! (more…)

Never forget: if you are a Republican, than this man hates you…

…he routinely lies about you and your motivations; and he wishes you to die in a fire.  Obviously, you don’t have to respond in kind; in fact, I would recommend that you purge yourself of any hate that you might still harbor towards Anthony Weiner.  You can even feel pity.

But he chose his path.

Let me summarize the positions of the people in this clip:

(more…)

I know, I know: you have fatigue.  I have fatigue.  But marvel none the less, my droogies: the Left used to love Anthony Weiner, until he fell to earth.  But now? He’s just a “somewhat holier-than-thou liberal” who has “never actually put much effort into his congressional work;” also, “an ultra-ambitious showman with a knack for generating publicity but little interest in the nuts-and-bolts work that comes with serving in Congress.” And apparently Weiner’s got “performer’s instincts” but not ones that make him want to be “a significant player in Congress.”

All of which I agree with; I’m just shocked that Salon is saying it in the first place… oh.  Right.  The Democrats have an Eleventh Commandment, too:

Don’t get caught.

Moe Lane

DOOM.  And a 4 PM press conference!

[FURTHER UPDATE] If you missed that, then you have missed the most epic Wait, What? in recent political history.

[UPDATE]: Here’s the live feed for the press conference… which has been apparently taken over by Andrew Breitbart.  Wait, what?  Did Weiner run?

This would be where the deep hurting starts: Big Journalism released another photo from now-officially-beleaguered! Rep. Anthony Weiner to a second, as-yet-unnamed* woman.  Not only is said photo as explicit as the one that sunk Chris Lee’s career (essentially, naked male torso a go-go), there’s also this gem:

On Wednesday, May 18, 2011, Rep. Weiner sent an email to the young woman from that same Yahoo! email address that included the now-infamous grey underwear photograph (attached to the email as “package.JPG”):

And apparently there’s at least one more picture, which Big Journalism will apparently not be publishing, as it is too graphic for a family internet. Rep. Weiner’s going to have a 4 PM press conference: it should be a sockdolager of a show, not to mention riveting television.  Check it out.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Note: ‘as-yet.’  Greg Sargent (in full teeth-grinding mode) heard that ABC News has the name of the woman in question; let us just say that there may be more than a name involved, there.

Never mind on that Part 2 of the Weinergate endgame that I promised quite yet: via Ace comes this report from Big Journalism on Rep. Anthony Weiner that “suggests that the Brooklyn- and Queens-based representative and the young woman in question were involved in an online, consensual relationship involving the mutual exchange of intimate photographs.” They’ll be dribbling out their evidence for this suggestion over the day, and any hope by the Left that this will not be covered by the media will probably be neatly scuppered by this promise: “we will not be releasing all of the material because some of it is of an extreme, graphic nature.”

Yup. Statements like that are catnip for journalists – and, admittedly, for bloggers. (more…)