Here are 2000 words they could have printed...
Posted on 05/26/2007 1:49:34 PM PDT by Eurotwit
A few weeks ago – in between Hillary Clinton’s official entry into the presidential race and the first Republican primary debate of the cycle – the fiery online conservative forum Free Republic marked a decade in operation as one of the premier online forums for right-wing political discussion.
It also experienced one of the biggest internal battles to rock the site since the 2000 election of George W. Bush -- a tumultuous campaign year that nearly tore the site apart, as its founder and chief administrator first cleansed commenting ranks of Bush supporters, then, later, rallied to his support.
At the heart of the latest controversy: the fight over the conservative bona fides of Rudy Giuliani.
Over the past few weeks, chaos has reigned in the “Freeper” community as members sympathetic to the former mayor's candidacy claim to have suffered banishment from the site. They were victimized, they say, by a wave of purges designed to weed out any remaining support for the Giuliani campaign on the popular conservative web forum. Another significant chunk of commenters have migrated away from the controversial site over the action, according to a number of former site members and conservative bloggers who have been tracking the situation.
In a plaintive post on the blog “Sweetness & Light,” exiled commenter Steve Gilbert, who says he does not support the former mayor’s campaign, blasted the site’s new “anti-Giuliani, anti-abortion jihad.” Since George W. Bush was elected president, he wrote, “there haven’t been any large scale [Free Republic] purges to speak of – until now.”
The fight began one month ago, when site founder Jim Robinson posted an anti-Giuliani manifesto titled: “Giuliani as the GOP presidential nominee would be a dagger in the heart of the conservative movement.” Then the virtual ax started to swing. Longtime posters to the freewheeling discussion threads, used to serious no-holds-barred web etiquette, were still stunned by the intensity of the anti-Rudy activity; conservative blogs buzzed with the development.
“Jim Robinson has been going on a tear demonizing Rudy Giuliani, because Rudy (agreeing with the vast majority of Americans), is personally opposed to abortions on a moral level…” complained a user on the GOPUSA Web site. “Anyone who posts any support for Giuliani at the site, if it's at all forceful, will be banned.”
(“Normally, we don't allow complaints about other conservative forums,” chided the moderator, but “…because it is being discussed all over the Internet, I'll make an exception.”)
Just a few months ago, Rudy Giuliani placed second in an early Free Republic straw poll; now, his support on the site has been virtually eliminated. “After the ‘April Purge,’ I don't think there are any Rudybots left around here,” noted Free Republic commenter “upchuck” in one recent post. “And if there are, they're not posting pro-Rudy stuff :).”
The forums weren’t the only venue for the Free Republic’s new antagonism toward Mr. Giuliani, which coincided with a wave of comments expressing similar sentiments from other corners of the conservative movement. A few days after Mr. Giuliani’s equivocal Roe v. Wade comments at the Republican presidential debate on May 3, a new “STOP RUDY NOW News & Information Thread” was featured on the site, and a newly-created stand-alone category debuted via a link from the homepage: “The Giuliani Truth File.” (So far this campaign season, Mr. Giuliani is the only candidate – Republican or Democratic – to be singled out for that level of scrutiny from the Free Republic.)
Why Rudy? Why now? Some conservative bloggers and former commenters contacted for their view of the continuing controversy say they believe that site founder Jim Robinson holds ideologically middling Republicans like Mr. Giuliani responsible for the GOP’s congressional loss and current woes. (They asked that their names be kept out of this story for fear of antagonizing the famously frisky site regulars.)
Others claim that the former mayor’s top-tier status is spurring frantic site administrators into action. Finally, one popular theory holds that the Free Republic is secretly hoping for another Clinton presidency that would send its Alexa ratings soaring back to levels it hasn’t experienced since its halcyon days of the Clinton impeachment, when a since-soured relationship with blog pioneer Matt Drudge and overwhelming anti-Clinton sentiment in Republican ranks helped make Free Republic one of the hottest Web sites in the nation. It hasn't recovered that luster since the Bush administration took over.
“It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s an observation,” said one blogger, who describes himself as a half-hearted Mitt Romney supporter. “They’ve still got a brand name that means something, but they’re not what they were in terms of real-world impact. A Hillary presidency would get them there.”
Robinson himself could not be reached for comment, but his original post laid out his case against Mr. Giuliani – a graphics-heavy presentation of some of the former mayor’s most damning moderate quotes in mainstream media venues, along with a color-coded report card tracking his less-than-doctrinaire positions on abortion, immigration, gays and guns.
Robinson, it should be noted, famously blasted George W. Bush’s presidential candidacy back in 2000, before a dramatic late-campaign about-face that saw him emerge as one of the GOP ticket’s biggest supporters. But whether or not Free Republic experiences a similar election-year shift this cycle, the site’s current campaign is spreading a dangerous primary-season meme of Rudy Giuliani as big-city liberal – and turning one of the most influential web forums in conservatism into an exclusive gathering place for those who share that view.
It has been a good policy and I hope it continues. If a commercial sponsor did something members didn’t like, people would begin boycotting because of the sponsor. It’s a road best not traveled.
“Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg marching in the gay pride parade in Manhattan in 2001.”...........
From Lindsay to these guys, some of us are trying to stay pansie proof here on FR.
I was once quoted in a Salon.com article about a FReeper event I attended, but they didn't even mention my screen name, they referred to me as "a large, angry man". lol
Did you get my point or are you just picky about my typing. If you understood my point, then communication occurred. If you did not, this thread has move beyond it anyway.
Happy Memorial Day to you.
Since when.I visit the site every day and I have seen nothing regarding Giuliani purged from this site.
It makes me the the author is off his meds.
I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.
(Fritz Perls, 1969)
Further, as Mark Twain once said "we all do a great deal of emoting which we call thinking...the aggregation of this is called public opinion...it settles everything...some think it is the the voice of God. Essentially, much commentary is not based on a reasoned judgment or an attempt to find a common political cause, but, rather, to find a fictional emotionally based unanimity of opinion.
Finally, a successful political endeavor strives to expand its base not restrict it. In a word, politically speaking, conservatives are all more alike than they are different. Bashing Rudy may be fun. Lionizing Richard Land, James Dobson and others for threatening to take the ball and go home if their political wishes are not fulfilled might make good copy but it will not win an election.
muawiyah,
Well, the Saamis don’t like Guiliani.
What’s you connection with us anyways?
Cheers,
Saami boy.
Here are 2000 words they could have printed...
Hey, that sounds just like me!
Haven’t gotten that far into it yet.
ping. This thread could still be here when you get back if you are out enjoying Memorial Day. (assuming you haven’t seen it yet.)
I just was wondering what Alexa rating has to do with the conspiracy angle the writer was pushing since it is a meaningless rating to a non-com site
It's time for war. Someday it'll be time for peace. In the meantime every spare dime must be spent on the war and the defeat of the enemy.
The enemy must be crushed and exterminated.
Failure of any politician to comprehend that makes him or her an active enemy of the American people and their progeny.
You are most welcome.
Please pay attention and you won't get another.
Unless, of course, you are an illiterate moron.
G'day.
Yet you have the gall to characterize it as "brownshirt behaviour" (and are unable to provide specifics when asked). That thread would take several days to read the whole thing and comprehend what was going on. I know because I spent the good part of a week reading it. Perhaps since you really didn't read that much, you should think about retracting your statement?
My goodness, I’m overcome by your natural ability to fling poo.
That might be relevant if FR sold advertising or memberships but, since it does not, such a theory is baseless. And it is certainly a damning accusation to believe JimRob *wants* another Clinton presidency. Isn't that sort of like Spike Jones secretly hoping for another Nazi Germany?
LOL... they've disected just about every regular here. Kind'a queer pastime...
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