Eric Massa Wasn’t Crazy

WILLIAM A. JACOBSON MAY 24, 2010 11:45 AM

Of course, that depends upon what the meaning of “crazy” is.

News has leaked out through an article in Esquire Magazine that Eric Massa, the disgraced Democratic rock star (was he the tickler, or the tickle-ee?), claims that Dick Cheney conspired with Gen. David Petraeus to stage a coup.

As summarized by Glenn Thrush:

Former Rep. Eric Massa told Esquire Magazine earlier this year that he believed Vice President Dick Cheney and Gen. David Petraeus had committed the highest offense against the nation by plotting an electoral “coup” against President Barack Obama.

Massa’s version of the story led Esquire’s journalists to conclude that Massa, who resigned in March amid allegations of sexually harassing male aides, was “a little bit crazy.”

Nonetheless, Esquire reports in its forthcoming edition, that Massa told the magazine “Gentlemen, what we have here is a constitutional crisis … If what I’ve been told is true — and I believe it is — General David Petraeus, a commander with soldiers deployed in two theaters of war, has had multiple meetings with Dick Cheney, the former vice-president of the United States, to discuss Petraeus’s candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency [in 2012]. And in fact, that’s more than a constitutional crisis. That’s treason.”

These allegations may be crazy, but they do put Massa in the mainstream of Democratic Bush/Cheney Derangement Syndrome:

• The Cheney Coup: “I promised myself I wouldn’t bring this up, it’s a hobbyhorse that I like to ride that has yet to excite anyone but me. But now that Dick Cheney is claiming his office is not an “entity within the executive branch” I can’t help myself. You see, I believe the vice president conducted a de facto coup on 9/11 when he ordered the “shootdown” of civilian planes.”
• Cheney’s coup: “Since the coup d’état of Executive Order 13292, however, the vice presidency has been transformed.”
• Cheney’s Plans for a Military Coup: “The Yoo memoranda set the stage for a military dictatorship, following exactly the sort of phased introduction that occurred in the cone of South America in the seventies and eighties.”

Crazy is a relative term. Just like “in” and “is“.

Update: After reading some of the comments, I realize I left out a critical part of Massa’s conspiracy theory. Massa asserted that Petraeus would deliberately not accomplish “the mission” in Iraq and Afghanistan so that Obama would be blamed:

Massa went on to say that “In order to succeed electorally, he must fail in his mission. Were he to run and win — and if he were to run, he would win in a landslide — we would be witness to an American coup d’état. It is the functional equivalent of the political overthrow of the commander in chief.”

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Related Posts:
Can We Get Back To Talking About Lying Politicians?
“I Did Not Serve In That Country, Vietnam”
Rewind: Massa A Dem Rock Star

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