How was Anthony Weiner so easily able to find such willing sexting partners?

Even conceding that Weiner’s pecs were pretty impressive when he took off his shirt, this is nevertheless the embodiment of the geeky guy we all grew up with who struggled with girls. Sure, his quick thinking and tart tongue probably earned him a few points with ladies, but not to a level that could account for the online action he seems to have scored.

What’s more, each of the women identified thus far is relatively young and attractive, at least according to the photos they themselves published online. Then there’s the pace at which these “relationships” moved. The Internet has clearly rendered obsolete any concept of rounding the bases. There was no dillydallying rounding first and second; Weiner’s sexting cuts right to home plate.

His exchanges with Vegas blackjack dealer Lisa Weiss are a case study. The blond 40-year-old looks pretty and made herself readily accessible after friending him on Facebook.

The online equivalent of “Can I buy you a drink?” was some disparaging thoughts about then-U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle. Before long, Weiss was telling a man she’d never met that she was “super drunk” while professing, “i think u r so totally hot and u r lucky i don’t have your number right now.” Her surrendering of her online virginity to Weiner came earlier this year when she offered “fb sex” with him, enabling Weiner to promptly put another notch in his mouse pad:

Weiner: hey sexy

Woman: What’s up baby

Weiner: hold on. let me look. Whoa, looks like I am wanna ride it?

And that’s the tame stuff.

Weiss, however, was sharing the Weiner with at least five other women, including Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old, brunette, single mom from Texas, who told ABC that she met Weiner online after seeing a YouTube rant he delivered in front of construction workers about a 9/11 health-care bill. Her online reaction? “Hotttt.”

Really? Anthony Weiner? The congressman from New York City?

If a dentist named Anthony Weiner testified in front of a congressional committee and said exactly what the real Weiner did in the 9/11 rant, I doubt Broussard would have had a similar assessment. Ditto for an architect, accountant, or electrician with the same characteristics of Weiner, but not his title.

Weinergate doesn’t tell us much about men that wasn’t already known. But what the kerfuffle proves once and for all is that political power, or the perception thereof, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Just ask Gennette Cordova, a 21-year-old college student in Washington state. She’s another of Weiner’s Facebook friends but says she never reciprocated his overtures. Her friends probably weren’t surprised to hear her name mentioned, according to Mediaite.com, because she was once deemed “Most Likely to Be Involved in a Tabloid Scandal” in her high school newspaper, the Piper. Mediaite claimed to find “no explanation why students pegged Cordova for exactly the fate she found herself experiencing just four short years later.”

Look, there are 435, mostly male, members of the House, and an additional 100 in the Senate. If we lined up 535 nonpoliticians, would we get the incidence of tomfoolery that we see in members of Congress? Some say no, believing that there is some element of risk-taking in the DNA of politicians that isn’t found in the public at large. But maybe there’s a different conclusion, owing not so much to the inferior morals of politicians, but rather, the attraction that some women hold toward men they perceive to be politically powerful.

It’s something to keep in mind should high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred soon announce her representation of the “victims” who followed Weiner via Twitter.

By Michael Smerconish

Michael Smerconish writes a weekly column for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may contact him via www.smerconish.com ― Ed.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer)

(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services)