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.
Other than the fact that she was murdered?
If you have a question for JR, ask him, not me.
Amen. Besides, the vernal equinox is a Satanic holiday anyway.
hmm we’re famously frisky...
I like that.. might use it for a tag line :)
On that, we disagree. She was dead a deacade earlier.
How exactly do you define dead?
If you have a question for JR, ask him, not me.
I've been wondering the same thing. What exactly are you implying? Do you think that JimRob has "fallen prey" to some sort of outside influence? Because many of us were delighted that he finally decided to do something about all of the FRiberals.
Absolutely correct. My memory is that W was never considered conservative, unfortunately the field was pretty thin. I favored Forbes in '00 but he was clearly too much of a poindexter to ever have a chance.
In other words, he understood the math and didn’t run from it. Many on both sides do not, nor do they care to.
However, your response is indicative of attitude that seem universally pervasive amongst the evolutionist posters. Because one poster is ignorant of the history and contribution of RA (or just plain a dumb-arse), I fail to see why the rest of us should be lumped-in and labeled as the “Purveyors of Unknowledge.” And for that matter, the underlying notion that if you do not believe in evolution, you are automatically anti-science. This is a ridiculous notion, yet it is near universally held by the vast majority of the few remaining (and most of the banned) evolutionists. If you cannot accept this truth of this point, how about you list the evo’s, who still post, that do not share this opinion.
Simply put, what the heck is it that makes the evolution defenders such an angry, bitter bunch of people to debate with? I say this after having watched a number of the evo-side posters flame out in an angry tirade of expletives. I remember PH and some of the others. I say this also because I never expected RA to end his posting career here in such fashion.
In other words, I thought RadioAstronomer was/would be an exception. Turns out I was wrong.
the fiery online conservative forum Free Republic marked a decade in operation as the premier online forum for right-wing political discussion.
There. Fixed it.
I know many liberal Democrats who complain that Hillary has no chance of winning.
I take it your definition of "liberal" includes people who place national defense at the top of the government's priorities.
I have to say I am rather surprised to find that FR no longer considers the military to be a conservative issue. That is real news. I haven't really developed a response, because it is so unexpected.
“To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.”
Boston Red Sox fans thinks New Yorkers are Yankees...
I take it your definition of "liberal" includes people who place national defense at the top of the government's priorities.
Somebody who supports abortion, supports militant homosexualism, supports illegal immigration and supports restricting the Second Amendment IS A LIBERAL.
So, are you going to answer the question or not, what is your theory on this "Wormwood" that you believe Jim Robinson has fallen prey to?
I don't have a theory. Call it an intuition. This site used to be more positive regarding the need for a competent Commander-In-Chief. The idea that it's OK to switch to a defeatist party in the middle of a protracted war is just a surprise to me.
Depends on how you're defining "science". Properly taken, being anti-evolutionist is being anti-science since it requires denying findings in about every major field of science.
This is especially true of young earth creationism, although old-earth creationism has its problems as well.
Theistic evolution does not have this problem, and I think some varieties of ID and mixed theistic evolution/special creationism (for instance, some people believe humans evolved from animals but the first true human became so when ensouled by God) also are not anti-science. ID as a major movement is indeed anti-science because it is a pseudo-scientific front for a religious movement (see the Wedge Document). The major players in ID are not interested in doing science, but apologetics.
I used to be a theistic evolutionist who dithered about the possibility of special creation of humans myself.
Simply put, what the heck is it that makes the evolution defenders such an angry, bitter bunch of people to debate with?
Most of us have college degrees in the sciences, and many of us have advanced degrees in our field. We often are debating people who aren't highly educated in the sciences. This isn't necessarily a problem. However, some of these people, although not being highly educated in science, have yanked some information that they don't really understand off of a creationist web site (by creationists own admission some of the creationist material out there is total nonsense (see AiG's Do Not Use list)) and are willing to go up against all the Nobel winners of this century in single combat. Because these people don't understand the basic science they're talking about, debating them can be more difficult than debating someone who has a clue because they can't understand it when you explain how they're wrong. Add to the fact that these posters often have an extremely healthy level of self-confidence and are proceeding from a religious certainty (according to AiG, "No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.") and you often find that they are evidence impervious.
Probably many times you have observed annoyance on our part we have been dealing with people that we've dealt with for months to years and know to be arrogant, ignorant, and obstinate. Additionally, I bet there's an observer bias, because I often see very rude comments directed towards evolutionists by creationists.
I realize that some people are actually interested in talking about the evidence, so I try to speak courteously to people who I cannot remember speaking to before or whom I know are not consistently obnoxious. Sometimes the conversation goes downhill, but sometimes it does not.
bookmark
I don't know where you would be getting that idea from. The ONLY people who have been pushing an incompetent commander-in-chief are the Roody Rooters.
[snip]
The complaint by the individual attacking RA specifically referred to the private Freepmail, not the posts you cited.
None the less, if someone wishes to complain about RA's posted comments using that sort of language, then consistency demands they also get upset at the 600+ instances of the same word being used in other posts on FR that are still up for all to see.
The occasional use of profanity by a long-time poster on FR has never been grounds for banning.
I don’t expect a president to be an expert in military strategy. When I think of presidential incompetence, I think of someone who will retreat when the job turns out to be tougher and more unpopular than expected.
Specifically, I think of democrats.
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