It doesn't matter. The post mavens on Free Republic get some kind of a weird salacious pleasure out of seeking and finding duplicate posts and putting in nya-nya-nya gotcha entry in the alleged offender's post.
LOLOLOL!
The upside to connecting similar threads, for me, is to review comments on all related threads, as each may contain valuable links, etc. Only way to connect them, other than keywords, that many times does not work.