Posted on 06/11/2011 12:44:05 PM PDT by Qbert
A defiant Rep. Anthony Weiner will not resign and will instead seek treatment even as a the top leaders of the Democratic Party abandoned him en masse Saturday after it was revealed that he had communicated online with a 17-year-old Delaware girl.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the party’s top campaign chiefs — Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) — all called on Weiner to resign in statements released within minutes of each other.
But Weiner has ignored those calls and announced Saturday afternoon that he’s seeking “professional treatment.”
“Congressman Weiner departed this morning to seek professional treatment to focus on becoming a better husband and healthier person,” Weiner’s office said in a statement provided to POLITICO. “In light of that, he will request a short leave of absence from the House of Representatives so that he can get evaluated and map out a course of treatment to make himself well. Congressman Weiner takes the views of his colleagues very seriously and has determined that he needs this time to get healthy and make the best decision possible for himself, his family and his constituents.”
Weiner, a New York Democrat, admitted on Monday that he had sent sexually charged text messages and photographs to a series of six women over three years. On Friday, FOX News reported that Wilmington-area police had visited a Delaware teenager to discuss his back-and-forth with her.
Weiner and the girl’s family have told news outlets that there was no indecent communication, but the evidence that he carried on a discussion of any kind with a 17-year-old girl was clearly the final straw for Democratic leaders.
Pelosi and Israel only issued their statements after asking Weiner privately to call it quits, and when he refused, they issued their coordinated barrage on Saturday afternoon.
“They both called him this morning and said ‘you should resign,’ and he didn’t and they issued their statements,” a source familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. “The White House was engaged.”
Patrick Gaspard, the former White House political director, was the point man for the DNC, the source said.
“Congressman Weiner has the love of his family, the confidence of his constituents, and the recognition that he needs help,” Pelosi said Saturday. “I urge Congressman Weiner to seek that help without the pressures of being a Member of Congress.”
A day earlier, Pelosi had declined to call for him to resign after inquiries to her office.
Israel and Wasserman Schultz were less generous in their assessment of their colleague.
“Anthony’s inappropriate behavior has become an insurmountable distraction to the House and our work for the American people. With a heavy heart, I call on Anthony to resign,” Israel said.
Calling the scandal a “sordid affair, Wasserman Schultz, who is a surrogate for President Barack Obama in her role as DNC chairman, said “the behavior he has exhibited is indefensible and Representative Weiner’s continued service in Congress is untenable.”
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the Budget Committee Chairman and former DCCC chairman, also joined the calls to resign on Saturday. “Anthony Weiner’s repeated violation of the public trust is unacceptable,” Van Hollen said. “He can best advance the issues he fought for by resigning immediately.”
Weiner’s spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but it’s now clear that Weiner has virtually no support in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.
The Weiner scandal is now going into its third weekend after a picture of a man’s crotch was posted on his Twitter account. After spending a week denying that it was him, Weiner held an extraordinary press conference Monday in New York and revealed that he had not only sent that picture, but had conducted sexually charged online relationships with a half dozen women.
And while nobody can force Weiner to resign — short of a formal expulsion from the House, which is extremely rare — if he does return to the House on Monday after a week-long recess, he’ll basically be persona non grata in the Democratic Caucus.
Weiner has informed congressional leaders he plans to seek treatment, according to Democratic insiders, and that was a factor in their decision to urge him to resign, first privately and later publicly.
A “coordinated effort was kicked off once Weiner decided to seek treatment,” a senior Democratic aide told POLITICO. “Leaders have been talking to him all week. His decision to seek treatment, on top of pressure of Sunday shows and members coming back on Monday, all equaled the ultimate decision for the leaders to go today.”
It was also revealed this week that Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin is pregnant — and she’s currently traveling abroad as an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
If Weiner does succumb to pressure and resign, it’s clear that the contact with the 17-year-old girl was the end game.
The girl, whose name was withheld by Fox but who told the reporter she’s “doing OK,” left with her mother and the police, the network said, although it was unclear if there was a further conversation somewhere else.
A Weiner spokeswoman emailed a statement in response to the reports that confirmed his contact with the girl, but denied anything was amiss.
“According to Congressman Weiner, his communications with this person were neither explicit nor indecent,” said the statement.
On Saturday morning, the New York Post and the New York Daily News reported that the New Castle cops had not found anything wrong in Weiner’s exchanges with the teen-ager.
Dead on...he was the Horshack / Screetch of his school...politics is his way of exacting revenge on all of society.
I’m sorry..but if humans can be smegma (toe jam) this guy is it...get the hook and get him off stage...he is not ready for a real job..maybe when he grows up. Is that too harsh?
RING RING
Hello Tiger? It’s Weiner!
I ain’t resignin’...
There should be calls for expulsion of this arrogant little $muck.
The Democrats are now reaping what they sowed when they let Bill Clinton stick his nose up at the American people while they functioned only as his enablers. Now we have a young upstart, disciple of Bill, that has learned well how to be a Toon . . . and in that sense, the chickens have truly come home to roost.
The Democrats will be paying installments on their moral failure for years to come.
The American people have finally had just about enough.
Don’t let him resign!
We need him front and center in the cameras to remind everyone that he is the Democrat party. Start running ads of him screaming during his famous rants and make him look certifiable. Then show clips of the Democrat leadership supporting him.
Ridicule is our best weapon.
Weenie can’t afford to quit. He has never worked in the much dreaded private sector. He is not a lawyer so he can’t fall back on that. He has no skillz other than ultra liberal “political hack”
Weenie graduated from college, he went right to work at Chuck Schumer’s Washington Office. You have to have connections to score that kind of job
Who’s paying for this time away from it all, the Congressional health insurance taxpayers provide him?
They can call for him to resign all they’d like but unless they can get two-thirds of the House to expel him, he doesn’t have to go anywhere before 2013.
“And some of the “sad cases” unfortunately, it has to also be said...are the women who respond in kind to men like Weiner. Any woman who does not value herself, and willingly allows a man to “get off” by talking dirty, sending lewd pics and expecting her excited response, or even sending pics of herself, cannot have much confidence in herself as a woman.”
Yep. It’s an ego thing I think for a lot of them- one minute they were just average people (albeit, with deep insecurities) on Twitter- they next minute they are personally exchanging private info with a powerful Congressman who they see on TV all the time. (Even years later, Monica Lewinsky’s apparently still sadly pining for her “only love”, Bill Clinton- same kind of thing, in a way). The powerful man-child, and the insecure, emotionally-vulnerable woman in these cases- they feed off each other’s sickness... and it’s gussied up by the left and called “sexual freedom”. They’ll never admit what it really is.
Peter Tweeter is such a scumbag. He’s a perfect poster boy for the morally bankrupt Rat party.
Good question.
Release the hounds!!!!!!!!!!!!
Treatment for what?
Lack of morality and ethics do not get “treatment.”
I can “cure” him in 5 seconds. turn his computer off. that solves the whole “jacking it to strangers on twitter” thing in one move.
>> Defiant Weiner won’t resign
For more than 4 hours?
Does this mean we would get an avalanche of stories about the cured Weiner after his release from sex rehab? He’ll be a changed man, and I might throw up.
He is being treated for carpal tunnel syndrome.
Hang in tehre Weeny!
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