Primaries are brutal. Thankfully, we won’t have to go through that nonsense the next time around and the Democrats will. Good times are coming.
The first thing you should realize is that not everyone here are what they claim to be. We have Russian, democrat, socialist and Bircher posters that are not Conservative or Libertarian and have never been.
They post to confuse and discourage.
There were some knock down-drag outs in '16. Yes sir. But they paled in comparison the the bugzapper threads of 2008. Thousands of arguments. Hundreds of zots. On a daily basis.
For those reasons we established the Trump Train early under Jims blessing. We have become so close it’s often referred to as the Trump Family Train. Yes we keep a low profile most of the time. But you are welcome to lurk there. And post when you are comfortable. From all fifty states and many in your age group. Will ping you to. It and you can introduce yourself when ready
I did the same thing, sort of. I joined here in 2000 under a different name. Because I had differing opinions with a few, I was harassed and my life made miserable so I finally left after being here for several years. I rejoined under a different screen name sometime around when Obama came on the scene. So far I haven’t been trolled as much but I don’t post much now and I never start topics.
I see all of the never-Trump’ers in here and don’t respond because I don’t plan to leave again. Some days it’s more like DU in here than the Free Republic I love but I’m dealing with it.
I think about half of our members think we’re better as an opposition party when the democrats are in power. The other half thinks we’re better as an opposition party when the republicans are in power. And sometimes our hats get mixed up.
There are so many things that are causing the difference. Conservatism is going through a metamorphosis. We to a degree experience great division during primaries. But the primary season has continued because we elected a candidate that didn’t arrive with traditional conservative bona fides. And that candidate was able to cobble together an electoral victory and become president. Yet he while he has done some great things, he still hasn’t acted Presidential and his past scandals keep playing out. A lot of people here claimed they never could support a person with the character issues lack of family values that this president has exhibited in the past and possibly present. Raw language, multiple marriages, iffy business dealings, a known philanderer to past wives and possibly the existing one had made it difficult to have in the White House a man who brings a democrats baggage.
Aren’t never trumper posts here really rare?
Maybe i haven’t been paying attention or just ignore them.
I think this forum is pretty great these days, I don’t see any problems but maybe I’m following different threads
It’s not supposed to be a Libertarian site. Libertarians and conservatives are dogmatically opposed in many issues.
You have an interesting take on things. I stopped frequenting FreeRepublic during the time leading up to the primary election because the pro-Trump crowd was absolutely brutal to anyone supporting any other candidate. I think what you see today is not so much the views of Never-Trumpers, but people who are disappointed in Trump signing the Omnibus bill and talking about instituting gun control.
I think everyone on FreeRepublic was glad to see Trump beat Hillary. And I think most people here agree that Trump has done a lot of good. If there’s any frustration here, it’s probably because the Republicans hold both houses of Congress and the White House, and yet they can’t get Trump’s appointments approved, they can’t stop the awful Omnibus bill, they can’t build the wall, they can’t repeal Obamacare, and they can’t seem to drain the swamp. It’s not all Trump’s fault. In fact, it’s not even mostly his fault. Our representatives and senators have let us down.
But I surely don’t share your view that the site is dominated by Never-Trumpers.
There are two things I like about this forum. First are the postings, which are usually relevant to the things I care about, and save me the time of having to dig up facts and commentary for myself. The second is the clean, uncluttered format, which is just robust enough for the purpose. Those are the things I like about this forum.
A huge amount of the people active on this forum used to be strongly in favor of open borders.
As a nation we are at the exist or cease to exist point.
It became no longer possible to allow any of them to subvert border security priority to anything else...and they have largely left.
That is the largest group by far which has departed.
We’re in a difficult place. Many of the bricks of our conservative edifice turned out to be false. We’ve all had to rethink our positions once it turned out that the pub-e party really HAD gone over to the dark side.
> Along the way I lost my Free Republic password, and there was no way to recover it.
I solve this problem by using the password “Alzheimers” everywhere.
There have been several purges over the last decade. Now we’re lucky to see fifty threads in a day instead of an hour or two.
I am new to FR, however my father joined in the 90’s. While I ignored politics until Obama, I gravitated to FR during the 2016 campaign. I could not handle the fake news anymore and the idiotic pundits. I cannot comment as to the changes in attitude on FR but would like to point out that many claiming to be ‘conservative’ preferred Hillary to Trump based on moral principle such as National Review, the Bushes, GOPe, and others (globalists). I am not insinuating that FReepers are not conservative. I’m merely pointing out that Trump has exposed many people and institutions directly or indirectly. Until voters realize that politicians are not conservative, DC will not change. The majority need to be primaried.
FR has changed a lot since 98.
So have many things.
Some posters are paid disruptors from the other side. They pretend to be conservative but are not. Several of checked the posting history of a couple posters and found they’re accts were active 24/7. And I mean every hour 24 hours a day. You could see the different writing styles
What’s happened is nothing new. There have been “purity” vs. “not pure enough” circular firing squads on FR for a long time, reflecting the same internecine conflicts played out elsewhere. I submit this type of conflict is what led to the destruction of any meaningful opposition to the far left that dominates California, for example.
Lotta ‘sunshine patriots’, FRiend .. always have been, always will be.
You gotta develop a sort of mental mute button and skim past the white flag wavers and hair burners.
Many claim ‘principle’ for what can often be better attributed to ego.