Were they previously libs or did they slowly turn into ‘them’?
By FR standards, perhaps, but I think the typical use of RINO would have been better for David (he's the guy whose handle was "Snopes"). Barbara struck me as a bright typical Canadian.
But those are just my impressions/recollections. As I indicated before, their research wasn't so infused with politics back then. Plus, remember that they met on USENET. Back in those days, fewer statists were online, so many FReepers would have been laughed away as big-government libs, whilst HuffPosters would have been lumped right with them, by many people who are now considered "conservative" or "liberal," respectively.