Anderson Cooper Asks Paul Begala: If Weiner Were Republican Would You Think This Was Nothing?

Former Clinton adviser turned CNN political analyst Paul Begala Wednesday evening gave Anderson Cooper the predictable Party line about Weinergate being no big deal.

Without skipping a beat, the host of "Anderson Cooper 360" replied, "But, Paul, if this was a conservative Republican, would you be saying the same thing?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Paul, what do you think of all this? Should the congressman continue talking about this or should he just -- can he now move on that he did all these interviews?

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: [Yawns] Yes, I -- wake me when we have a real sex scandal, Anderson. You know, this is -- please.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: But, Paul, if this was a conservative Republican, would you be saying the same thing?

BEGALA: Yes, who allegedly had a picture of him taken in his underwear and then someone hacked his account and sent it out?

I do think the apparent hacking of a congressman's account maybe is more of a story. And this is the Democrat.

BORGER: Right.

BEGALA: But it is a right-wing blogger who was pushing this, and a pretty unreliable one at that, which mama always said, consider the source.

So, I think he did a very good job. I think Wolf is right. I think he gave Wolf a very good interview, answered every question the best that he could, could not or would not answer, yes, that's me.

But, you know, OK, so what? Who cares? He clearly -- I mean, I think he's credible when he says, I didn't send it.

And plenty of liberal bloggers have replicated this hacking today. They have been in there saying, look, this is plausible. I'm no techie. I have no idea. I don't tweet. So is beyond my ken. But I just think, you know, when the Dow drops 279 points in a day, the career-ending scandal could be the governor of New Jersey, who is taking a state helicopter apparently yesterday to go to see his kid's baseball game. I mean, that's the kind of thing that voters get furious about, spending $2,500 an hour of state money to take a helicopter to your kid's baseball game.

What Anthony Weiner is even accused of doing, even if true, is just nothing.

You got that?

Even if Weiner is 100 percent guilty of sending that tweet to a 21-year-old college student, it's nothing.

Why isn't that at all surprising coming from someone that used to advise Bill Clinton?

Isn't it also telling that Weiner's offense - assuming he did it - is nothing, but Gov. Christie's helicopter excursion is possibly "career-ending?"

Exactly why does CNN have contributors that are so obviously biased?

(H/T Stephen Gutowski)