The Beck-Massa affair was a case of two political extremists who have gone so far in opposite directions that these strange bedfellows have wound up on the same mattress: They are both avowed foes of the Obama administration and its efforts to enact health-care reform. 
 
 Massa, who at first had said he was quitting for medical reasons but then admitted there were ethics problems, finally decided that he had been "set up" by the White House and Democratic leaders because of his opposition to health-care legislation. Democratic leaders, he ranted over the weekend on WKPQ, in Hornell, N.Y., "are going to ram this down the throats of the American people, and anyone who stands in the way of doing that is going to be smeared and they're going to be kicked out of Congress." 
 
 Twice on the show, he urged listeners to "call Fox News" to get him booked on the conservative news network. Sure enough, Beck came calling. But there was a problem with this arrangement. Massa opposed the reform bill because he thinks it isn't enough of a government takeover. He wants a government-run single-payer system -- what Beck would call socialism. 
 
 At the top of the show, there was a little flirtation. 
 
 "I have hundreds of friends who in the past 48 hours think I'm Beelzebub, think I'm the devil, because I'm going on this show," Massa said. 
 
 "I have several friends who think I'm the devil for having you on," Beck returned. 
 
 Massa tried to be ingratiating to his host. "By the way, we actually agree on some things," he said. He urged Beck's viewers to tell lawmakers to oppose the health-care bill -- as though that may not have occurred to them. 
 
 But Beck was unimpressed. He didn't understand why Massa, if he had truly been wronged by the White House and Democratic leaders, would resign rather than stay and fight. "Bull crap, sir," Beck said of Massa's explanation. 
 
 It deteriorated from there. Massa suggested that Beck "stop calling fellow Americans names . . . socialist, communist, whatever the case may be." He also told the conservative audience: "You can't show up at a 'tea party' rally and claim that the entire budget deficit happened this year." 
 
 And Massa, though he brought a chest X-ray to document his illness, had nothing to support his hints that Democratic leaders had made corrupt bargains and used thuggish tactics. "Name names," Beck pleaded. "Show us where to throw the dirt." 
 
 But no matter how many times he was asked -- Anything new? Actionable stuff? Anything specific? -- Massa came up empty. "I don't know how to be specific," he said. 
 
 In the show's waning minutes, Beck surrendered. "America, I've got to shoot straight with you," he said, looking into the camera. "I think I've wasted your time. I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time, and I apologize for that." 
 
 Seems Massa's dalliance with the right was to be a one-night stand. ||||| He’s spent only 431 days in Congress, has never seen any of his bills pass out of subcommittee and was best known for voting against major pieces of legislation because they weren’t liberal enough for him — at least until he was accused of sexually harassing a male staffer. 
 
 Meet Eric Massa, conservative media hero. 
 
 The New York Democrat’s weekend radio rant against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has his star rising on the right even as he resigns from Congress under an ethical cloud. 
 
 Rush Limbaugh vowed to make a “national story” out of Massa’s claims that Democrats orchestrated his downfall because he voted no on health care reform — adding that Massa is “going to have so much support from people.” 
 
 Matt Drudge led his site for much of the day Monday with all-caps links to POLITICO’s coverage of Massa’s statements: “RAHM ‘WOULD SELL HIS OWN MOTHER,’ ‘SON OF THE DEVIL’S SPAWN.’” 
 
 And Glenn Beck took to Twitter to announce that he’d have Massa on his show for “the full hour” Tuesday because “all Americans need to hear him.” 
 
 Democrats warned that the GOP should be careful about embracing Massa. 
 
 “If the stories that are circulating are true about what really happened, the Republicans are going to hold up someone as the cause célèbre who harassed male members of his staff,” said a senior Democratic strategist. “Is that really where they want to be?” 
 
 And at least some voices on the right were urging caution, too. 
 
 Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin warned her readers not to be fooled by a “weapon of Massa distraction.” 
 
 “He’s been a progressive zealot and political opportunist his entire career,” Malkin wrote Monday afternoon. “He’s claimed conspiracy before, is intimately bonded with the nutroots and climbed the political ladder with backing from the odious, anti-war-hoaxer-embracing Gen. Wesley Clark. What Massa dismissively calls his ‘salty old sailor’ talk should raise bright-red flags about possible long-standing predatory behavior.” 
 
 Massa downplayed his ethical troubles in a 90-minute interview with radio station WKPQ on Sunday, saying Democratic leaders were using a single comment he made at a wedding reception on New Year’s Eve as a pretext to get him out of the House. ||||| Conservative activists rallied Monday to the side of a liberal New York Democrat who had resigned from the House, after he charged that his party's leaders had conspired to oust him over his opposition to President Obama's health-care legislation. 
 
 Eric Massa's resignation Monday came after an ethics investigation into his conduct, and allegations of sexual harassment of staffers, became public. And his remarks on a Sunday radio show were only the latest in a series of explanations of why he was leaving the House. 
 
 Nevertheless, conservative blogs touted his accusations against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) as the latest evidence of Democrats' bare-knuckled political machinations to get a health-care bill to Obama's desk. 
 
 Conservatives have complained about other examples of what they see as illegitimate deal-making to secure votes: what they call the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase" in the Senate to line up Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), respectively, and Obama's appointment last week of a Utah professor -- the brother of Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), an opponent of the health bill -- to the federal appeals bench. 
 
 Massa's allegation that he was the victim of a setup, in order to lower the number of "yes" votes needed to pass a bill, fed into that growing anxiety about Democratic tactics. 
 
 His comments spread quickly online, promoted by conservative blogs such as Red State and National Review Online. 
 
 Rush Limbaugh devoted a segment of his Monday radio show to Massa, saying the lawmaker "warns us what we all know, but I think you need to hear it from a Democrat being forced out by Obama and Steny Hoyer and Pelosi." And the most popular conservative on television, Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck, announced that he will conduct an hour-long interview with the Democrat on Tuesday. 
 
 Official Republicans, meanwhile, remained mostly mum -- the office of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not release a statement on the matter, but aides encouraged reporters to tune in to Beck's show. 
 
 Hoyer's spokeswoman, Katie Grant, said Massa's claim was "completely false" and added: "There is zero merit to that accusation." 
 
 And Democrats pointed to Massa's own statements Friday, in which he said that he is fleeing Congress in an effort to avoid the ethics investigation. Such a probe, he said, "would tear my family and my staff apart." 
 
 Massa returned to his Corning, N.Y., home late last week. On Sunday, he took part in his final weekly appearance on a Hornell, N.Y., radio station and spent 90 minutes attacking Democrats, particularly Hoyer and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. 
 
 "You have my apology and you have my resignation, because I'm a human being, but I will not go quietly into the evening. I will not be ashamed of my actions, other than the fact that I used inappropriate, verbal -- v-e-r-b-a-l -- language," he said. "And I was set up for this from the very, very beginning. If you think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote on the health-care bill, then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what is going on in Washington, D.C." 
 
 Massa's departure leaves 431 members of the House, lowering the number of votes for a majority from 217 to 216. 
 
 The House will consider a Senate version of the health-care bill later this month, and if all lawmakers voted as they did in the November vote on health care, Democratic leaders would have precisely 216 votes. But dozens are considering switching their votes -- some from no to yes and others from yes to no -- making it impossible to determine whether Massa's vote would have been "deciding." 
 
 Massa also accused Hoyer of lying about his knowledge of the ethics investigation and said Emanuel was the "devil's spawn" who once confronted him naked in the shower of the House gym. 
 
 Massa also gave his first detailed description of what might have sparked the ethics investigation. At a staffer's New Year's Eve wedding, he engaged in sexually charged banter with male staffers about the bridesmaids, and a junior aide suggested the lawmaker make a pass at one woman, Massa said. He added that he responded: "What I really ought to be doing is fracking you. And then [I] tousled the guy's hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn't right for me to be there." 
 
 Massa denied on the radio show that he is gay. "Ask my wife -- I think she can answer that question," he said.
– Eric Massa's disastrous interview with Glenn Beck yesterday has brought his brief flirtation with the right to an end, writes Dana Milbank. Tickle fights? Beck himself told viewers, "I think I've wasted your time," after Massa refused again and again to be specific about the promised Democratic dirt. And he called "bull crap" on Massa's attempt to explain why he quit instead of staying to fight. Turns out "Massa's dalliance with the right was to be a one-night stand," writes Milbank at the Washington Post. Tom Schaller called Beck's apology to viewers "one of the most honest moments" he's ever seen on TV. " It's hard to out-crazy Glenn Beck, whose show is sponsored by the Yoshi Knife, and gold brokers running ads featuring Gordon Liddy and the dude Matt Damon chumped down in the famous bar scene from Good Will Hunting. But this afternoon, Massa did just that," he writes at FiveThirtyEight.