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.
I don't think so.
He would have said "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me".
Reagan was a practical conservative. He was once a tax raiser (when he was Governor of CA) until he watched as the Dems kept on spending each time he balanced the budget.
He then decided that deficits were a good club to beat over their heads every time they tried to increase spending. Essentially taking away the booze from the alcoholic.
You seem to be saying that Irish terrorism is not really terrorism because of the actions of the British. If so, that is an evil and foolish thing to say. Evil because it is never legitimate to deliberately target civilians. Foolish because, of course, the British do not consider their political relationship with Northern Ireland to be one of occupation, and neither does the U.S. (or the U.N. for that matter). You should take your idiotic and evil sectarianism elsewhere. This is not an Irish terrorist supporting site.
Her account is still active but she hasn't posted since April.
You oldtimers can be such a pain... :o)
T'wit: 4 Dec 1997
Spiff: 5 Dec 1997
You are mistaken. RA was banned for cause, not once but twice. The second infraction made it permanent.
There is no litmus test involved to join, so lots of folks join in who THINK they’re conservative, and then bristle when the prevailing objectives of this site (or any other) do not match their own particular sense of reality.
***Yes, I’ve seen the same thing with lots of rudybots. That’s why I kept posting this statement from JimRob’s front page below. It was one of the few filters that would work & get them to admit that they were not social conservatives.
As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America. We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc.
Just call me “sir,” youngster.
Mr. Guiliani represents a state - NY - that has become the basket case of the western world...or at least the middle Atlantic and Great Lakes region. Many regions of NY look more like Appalachia in the 1930s than the once glorious Empire State. And like desperate people sometimes do they have voted in a maniac for governor and 2 senators who wouldn’t even make good dog catchers.
The NYS Republican Party is led by a bunch of vapid old corrupt has beens and hangers on who have either fallen on their swords or keep ripping themselves to shreds in one agonizing defeat after another...and now on top of all this gothic horror show they endorse Rudy as a favorite son. A “savior” they believe who based on his toughness during 9-11 will carry the day in 2008.
Looking for more failure? Vote for Rudy.
Hahahaha!
You are really onto something. There's a billion-dollar business in this. I can just see a delivery truck pulling up at your place six times a day. The driver brings the new, clean baby to your doorstep and carries off the old dirty one, and tosses it into a bin in the back of the truck for processing at the factory.
No, you didn't misread it. Someone miswrote it.
Arafat wasn't invited to the event. I believe the city was hosting the event. Rudy threw the jihadist-loving, bus-exploder Arafat out on his ass.
Arafat may have been a guest of Clinton in Washington, but he was a tresspasser at the event.
Good for Rudy to throw him out.
You should be embarassed to criticize such an action.
Fitting...
Proof positive that we did the right thing. Freepers coming out of hiding and expressing themselves like mountain flowers after a spring rain.
Sorry about that. Try this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612338/posts?page=415#415
what the heck gives you the right to question my reasons for being here.
***Interesting. That was one of the questions put to Peach that she refused to answer, just before she was banned. It was also a question put to nopardons, long before she was banned but she was probably kept around to be a pasquinade. You grow more shrill with each passing week, I guess Spiff was right, yours appears to be the longest opus in FR.
I’ve got nine years in here...
***So did quidnunc, right before JimRob used him as toilet paper and threw out yellow smoke. Good luck in your endeavors at WA.
You mean this?
I didn’t pester or curse, but I did ridicule and humiliate some of those who have since left for bluer pastures full of the manure they like to shovel.
It was especially humiliating for them when I copied and pasted their own words, for everyone to see.
And yes, I ridiculed them for supporting forced euthanasia. When they paraphrased Nazi propaganda posters, I posted images of the posters they were paraphrasing.
I happily helped them reveal themselves. They made it so easy. Perhaps it was because they honestly didn’t think there was anything wrong with their views, or practices. And yes, some of them did practice what they preached. It was nauseating.
When they were finally called to task for their ways, they stood behind their views and practices as firmly as the Nazis stood behind theirs. As though everyone else was just too stupid to understand how right they were.
I’m not sorry that I stood firm against their agenda. And I’m not sorry that they no longer have use of this forum to push their agenda. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I clicked on Travis’ screen name, and it shows him as not being banned.
And I remember those posts, because they made me laugh. The absurdity of needing to remind folks of what the site is all about was only matched by the cognitive dissonance of those who looked right at your (Jimrob’s) list, and then would spout their crap anyway!
The fact is though, there are atheists here, and libertarians, along with others that don’t quite measure up to those standards, and they are tolerated as long as they behave themselves. It’s those who cannot control themselves, or who insist on shoving their non status-quo attitudes on the rest of our faces that get themselves bumped.
I’m grateful for the bugzapper thread, so I don’t have to worry about a cult of liberals descending on me like vultures.
***Well written. I did have them descend on me and I couldn’t figure out what had happened to Free Republic. Many moons ago I posted that JimRob would need to deal with his RINO invasion, and I’m glad he did. But I didn’t think he’d get around to it until after the election, so I started to feel like I would go back into lurker mode or my days as a freeper would soon draw short.
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