Gabriel Gomez Repudiates His OIP Derangement Syndrome

It’s hard to suffer from OIP Derangement Syndrome in Massachusetts. The population is well educated and exposed to a range of news, making it difficult to maintain prejudices and false beliefs about President Barack Obama without challenge. Gabriel Gomez, the neophyte now asking to be one of Massachusetts’s US Senators, has found that out.

Back in 2012, a group of special-forces veterans formed what they called the Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, or OPSEC for short. This was a 501(c)(4) non-profit “social welfare” organization that was not supposed to have politics as its primary function.

But the group was bankrolled by Republican/Tea Party operatives, and its main activity was an election-year video criticizing the President for how he’d announced the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. OPSEC drew immediate comparisons to the deceitful anti-Kerry “swiftboat” campaign of 2004.

OPSEC’s video was based on falsehoods, as the New York Times campaign blog pointed out:

Anyone who watched the late-night address in which Mr. Obama announced Bin Laden’s death will remember that he praised the “tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals” and the “years of painstaking work by our intelligence community.” The Opsec video includes a clip of that address, but omits the “heroic work” and “painstaking work” lines so that it seems as though Mr. Obama gave himself undue credit.

The question of whether Obama should have said more about the military personnel or less about his choice to deploy them is a value judgment, colored by how well people can accept the man as President. But on factual matters Politifact evaluated three other statements from OPSEC as Half True, Mostly False, and False.

Gomez helped to publicize OPSEC’s positions. A former Navy SEAL, he went on television to speak for the group, doing so in the first person: “We’re not saying he didn’t thank the troops and he didn’t give credit to the troops. What we’re saying is a big majority of the presentation was focused on him and his administration.”

But that was last August. A few months later Gomez decided to become to a Massachusetts Senator, and he scurried to deny that he’d ever exhibited OIP Derangement Syndrome. He privately promised the governor that he’d support major parts of the President’s agenda if he were appointed to the seat. When that didn’t work, he repudiated those policy positions, but he’s also tried to repudiate his propaganda work, as the Springfield Republican reported:

“I did two interviews for OPSEC,” Gomez said. “I was never associated with OPSEC. I never donated to OPSEC. I wasn’t part of OPSEC.”

When he appeared on MSNBC in 2012, Gomez was described as a “member” of OPSEC, but he now says, “I represent the point of view. I never represented the group.”

Gomez apparently doesn’t understand how television interviews are, like Presidential speeches, recorded for replay later. He tried to rise by playing to OIP Derangement Syndrome, and now he’s hobbled by his own words.