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.
I didn’t think of that when I posted the question to you although
someone else made a similar suggestion in response to my post.
Thanks for the explanation!
:-)
Yes. The Terri threads were something else.
To see people cheering her execution in the name of - what, husband’s rights? Useless eaters? - was heartrending and sickening.
And not even an execution such as a murderer would get in prison - over quickly, with the ACLU making sure the fiend doesn’t feel any “pain”. No, Terri’s execution was prolonged torture that is even illegal for people to commit to animals.
The post I refer to is right here.
I have been charged with lacking intelligence, so I may have misinterpreted this, but I can see nothing except one FReeper lashing out at another for supporting Romney.
To: freeplancer; felisberto
I am in Iraq for the second time,
That's nice, Dear.
On which side, if I may ask?
75 posted on 05/13/2007 4:31:54 PM EDT by null and void (The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.)
freeplancer's crime seems to have been objecting to the statement that a, 'Vote for Romney is vote for Satan'.
How am I reading this wrong?
Although I'll never live to see it I suspect my grandson will. His time will be an interesting one.
Is this it?To: moonman
I am in Iraq for the second time, so if you want to read someone’s bio, join a dating service and maybe you can police the threads on that site.
24 posted on 05/12/2007 5:58:48 AM EDT by freeplancer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
FGreeplancer made a mistake regarding the signup date for the poster who posted the anti-Mormon screed, and he later apologised for the mistake.
As he said, I don’t see how such a mistake warrants accusing an american GI in Iraq of treason.
I am not a Mormon, and anyone familiar with my posting history might be surprised to see me defending anyone’s religion. But the material in the lead article was pretty vile, and I can see someone becoming a bit unhinged reading it. Personally, I am used to being called a minion of Satan. In the old days I heard it five times a day.
Okie dokie, fatima!
You’re welcome.
freeplancer is active duty?Thank you freeplancer ,my granddaughter will be going there soon.
I don’t know freeplancer, but that is the implication. Before I started posting this stuff I looked up some of his old posts. His wife is also a FReeper, and says he’s been in Special Forces. There really isn’t any specific information about his current work. I suppose he could be a civilian consultant.
Does that make a difference to my question about why people are allowed to accuse him of treason? Apparently because he defended Romney?
However, there are lots of narrow minded zealots who have closed minds to differing opinions on most any web forum.
Numbskull's who confuse their brand of religion with conservatism.
That said: abortion is still the murder of an unborn child.
The 2 times out of 20,000 posts that RA ever used words such as these, and that's all you guys can talk about? Shoot...there are posts with foul language on this thread that are almost as bad, made by the owner of the site and members alike! The second time was only because he hit the post button twice, by accident.
He is a good friend to many here. If he knew someone was struggling, he was there for them. (as he was for me and my kids a couple years ago)
Who accused of treason?js1138,I am not a real Mod -just to get the all strait but I will ping Jim who is the Boss to what you have to say.
Hi beautiful! How are you my friend?
Hugs!
Book Mark.
Mikey's oft repeated question over the years it took to finish her off, was "Is that bitch dead yet?" Yet she remained amazingly cheerful and healthy right up to the moment the crew initiated the Exit Protocol and denied her a drop of water from that point forward.
I agree completely.
That would have settled the matter from day one.
In Terri's case IT WOULD NOT HAVE. At the time of Terri's injury, food and water WERE NOT CONSIDERED LIFE SUPPORT UNDER FLORIDA LAW. The law was later changed because of Terri. So, had she had an AMD it would have been okay to remove something like a respirator, but not to deny food and water. When Karen Anne Quinlan's parents fought to remove her from life support in the mid-70s, they never suggested denying her food and and water, in fact they said it would be murder.
Then it came down to what Micheal Schaivo said his wife wanted and I see lots of room for problems there and, hence, a legal battle.
I'm not sure about the varying laws from state to state, but I can say emphatically from a moral standpoint, WHEN A HUSBAND OR WIFE ABANDONS THEIR SPOUSE, MOVES IN WITH SOMEONE ELSE AND STARTS A FAMILY WITH THEM (HAS CHILDREN), THEIR MARITAL "RIGHTS" ARE OVER. "Til death do us part" DOES NOT MEAN UNTIL THE PERSON IS IN A HOSPITAL BED.
You must stretch a lot to have such flexible logic. Science neither proves, nor denies, the existence of God. Anyone who says otherwise, one way or the other, is a fool and is abusing science, just like creationists.
Wow.
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