he heh... you said Sinkspur and reason together...
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 have never cast aspersions on Ronald Reagan. That's in your little mind, Spiff.
He continuously explained that we had to compromise to achieve anything of substance in those days. He did not have the luxury of a majority in Congress.
And please do tell all of us exactly where I was attempting "to make a liberal candidate look better"?
I don't support Rudy as the candidate. So I don't know what your talking about.
You need to slow down and take a breath, IMO. You're wound way too tight.
I don't signout. I lurk...just like you do.
And why are you so interested in what they're saying over there? I haven't said anything negative about FreeRepublic.
Are you the new Freeper Police...going around asking 'Papers Please"?
Get lost!
he heh... you said Sinkspur and reason together...
sounds like the paid posters are complaining over being booted.
Why Spiffy? Whatever do you mean? Are you jealous that I responded to somebody mentioning the fine Rolling Thunder event? I would have done the same here but nobody was discussing it...haven't even seen a thread on it in here.
And my picking fights is again...all between YOUR ears.
You can check my posting history and I get along with the vast majority in here.
And unlike you I didn't have to join a pack of wolves to make it that way.
I'll leave the thread. You win.
Then who posted this post to which I was referring? It was posted YESTERDAY, not the 23rd of May.
I don't care if you post over there or on a million forums. What I was pointing out, a point you completely seemed to have missed, is that you spend all of your time over here complaining, harassing, and insulting while you post contributing things over there. That's my point. You've made yourself quite unwelcome here and it seems intentional. I suggested that you figure out some what to get along here and make some sort of contributions again and you come back with venom and more insults.
I did check your posting history. That's why I said what I said. Recently, since your liberal buddies got axed, it is replete attacks and a bunch of bitching and moaning. You jumped into this thread to call calcowgirl a liar and it got worse from there. You're fooling yourself if you think that the majority of people here approve of your behavior.
This is just an attempt to “cut down” free republic.
The DBM and MSM kos-iacs don’t want a unified conservative forum.
But you DID right here in this post. You said that Reagan signed an abortion bill, as Governor, knowing full well that it would be abused to legalize the millions of abortions it was never intended to. That's a terrible thing to say especially when Reagan himself said that he didn't know it would be abused like that. If he's your hero, as you claim, then you would not say untrue things like that.
No it isn't. Being no longer pregnant after the fact requires the inserted red text. That is honestly the case.
Can we all assume that your moniker really refers to DarwinCentralPatriot? That seems to be where your ideological allegiance lies.
That is completely wrong. People ask to be banned fairly often. That’s usually what an opus IS.
This article is a revenge article.
The effort is to create the ILLUSION of Guiliani as a centrist by saying FreeRepublic is too far to the right. IOW the mainstream of the USA is too far to the right.
They are trying to USE FR as a foil to rehabilitate the listing SS Guiliani.
The article is pure propaganda.
BTW to anybody, on a off topic, why doesn’t drudge list FR?
If anything that demonstrates FR is open to true discussions. That 2000 GWBush fact negates the whole premise of the article but of course not its purpose.
Sorry Charlie author, Guiliani is NOT a centrist, not even close.
You and your crew are but what? A dozen? You're not even a blip on the forum radar.
And once again you use the term 'liberal buddies'. Tsk-tsk. Just because you repeat a lie over and over again, doesn't make it the truth. It's just 'your' truth.
Peace!
now that is a freakshow flag raising ceremony. Just a question of which flag...
it is anti-freeper boiler plate.
It is a desperation move to use FR as a foil to boost Guiliani’s sagging fortunes.
Guiliani must be in HUGE trouble if his camp has to attact ANY conservative site.
Bottom line: Guiliani is finisshed.
I have more sentimental pictures of Ronald Reagan than you apparently have brain cells.
Here's one for you to contemplate....
Entirely possible.
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