Chris Matthews: Weiner Draws Ire of Culturally 'Backward' Christian Conservatives

This clip really starts out promising. On yesterday's "Hardball," host Chris Matthews was laying down the gauntlet for Anthony Weiner, saying that he must resign because "it's getting very, very hard to defend the behavior, politically, of the [Democratic] party."

So far so good.

He went on:

Now you throw on top of that immoral behavior, indiscrete behavior, embarrassing behavior, gross behavior like this, and you still have him in your midst. And that's my question to you. If you're Steny Hoyer, who does speak for the Blue Dogs, if you're Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker, who has to deal with them, don't you have to deal with the fact - you're losing any chance of getting back a 218 majority?

Good point. Hey, I like this Chris Matthews guy.

Then he launches into this:

I want you to pick this up, Ben. This is, to me, the stakes here. If he stays, they never get the leadership back. They never get the Speakership back because the people in the rural areas of this country who are Christian conservative culturally - you can say backward if you want - but they don't like this kind of stuff at all. They're not part of that 56 percent in Brooklyn and Queens who say, "okay, we can live with this guy." Your thoughts, Ben? Isn't that the cutting edge of this? [Emphasis added]

I knew it couldn't last long. Watch the comments below via NewsBusters: