The attacks were personal, not philosphical or based on fact, and the moderators allowed it against almost anybody who supported Perry. Perry supporters repeatedly hit the abuse button but got no help from the mods. I won't pay good money to be called an idiot, stupid, ignorant, a redneck Texan, pond scum, told to go get a brain, etc, and that isn't the worst of the name calling that went on. It was really over the top and that is why so many of us left and took our checkbooks with us. We weren't an overly sensitive group of thin skinned people, we only wanted to be treated with some basic respect.
We even had some folks very early on who were trying to say Sarah Palin wasnt a real consetvative.... WTF ?
I know the attacks happened (I received plenty of them for supporting Perry), but this site (and others) were just overwhelmed with it for awhile. I just don't see what the FR moderators could have realistically done. We just kinda had to get through that. I just don't blame the owner of this site or its moderators for the flood of anti-Perry stuff. It was just so much for awhile I don't think there was a practical way to stop it short of draconian methods that would have ended up causing even more problems. I think this was the direct result of Sarah Palin's actions. Her endless tease campaign caused a lot of damage to our primaries. A LOT of conservatives were so sure she was going to run and were determined to help clear the way for her - Perry (at least for awhile) was the most obvious threat to her candidacy. While Sarah was still dithering, there was a great risk that his campaign could have raised lots of money and established itself as the de-facto anti-Romney candidate. Lots of analysts were already declaring the primary was Perry's to lose. Many active Palin supporters simply went in to war room, overdrive mode and sought to destroy Rick before he could endanger a Palin campaign they were convinced was right around the corner.
Oh, yes. So Right. I’ve never been one to call abuse but some of the posters on the Perry threads were so NASTY, believe me, sexual innuendos, lies about Perry’s stand on immigration, it was horrible.
I was amazed that it was tolerated.
I am not talking posts that argued against Perry about actual positions or things he had done or not done.
These were all just odious, repetitive hate posts.
Started (in my opinion) by Cain lovers and allowed because the site was officially Cain lover at that time.
It signaled the death of civility here for me.
Well, you can’t blame the moderators. I instructed them to lay low, that I expected FR to be a bloody battleground for this primary season and that we would just have to let it play out. And play out it did. I did take out a few of the nastier ones, but we’re all supposed to be conservative adults here and for the most part we are. We shouldn’t need a nanny to tell us how to behave in public.
Spare me. The Perry supporters dished it out as much as they took it. That was the case for all candidate factions. Heck, the anti-Perry posts were nothing compared to the infighting between the Newt and Santorum camps over the last three months.
It's part of the primary process on FR. Happens every contested GOP presidential primary. And usually folks can largely coalesce behind the winner. Except, of course, when winner in question really didn't win the primary as much as he destroyed any alternative to him, and thereby left nothing but scorched earth for the GOP. Which is the case now.
The way it was is that Perry was portrayed as the anti Christ himself, then he was mocked as a rube.
No measure of his long record of conservatism was sufficient to call off the howling dogs.
I heard every BS line of hate on the Perry threads and I only saw one jackass zotted.
There was an entire posse with pinglists that just hounded poor Cincinatis Wife