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.
Are you sure this isn’t a satirical piece?
I remember reading something Steve Gilbert wrote on Sweetness and Light a while ago, but now can’t even remember how I discovered that site or what led me there. I can tell you one thing: the piece was very well, and carefully written, the journalism was of a very high standard , and NOTHING about it indicated in any way someone who “came over from DU”. He’s just way too smart, and , actually, well-balanced. I don’t remember him taking digs at FR so much as lamenting what he thought it had become. And what I remember reading by him had to do with a somewhat earlier period, like a year ago, on FR. As I remember it. But ,once again ,this guy as I remember my impressions reading him ,is not a dumbass Lib. WAY too smart, and writes WAY too well. And take into account that a lot of quotations in the posted article are NOT from Steve Gilbert but from someone else, I believe.
“Giuliani ‘not confident’ war will turn around” http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/14/giuliani.lkl/ Doesn’t he realize this could demoralize our troops and embolden the enemy?
If so, what’s wrong with you?”
Do you think that having pro-ILLEGAL immigration Rudy in the WH would turn the war around?
If so, what’s wrong with YOU????
So? That still has nothing to do with anything.
Woohoo! $100 from Washington DC! Thank you!
So? That still has nothing to do with anything.
Uh, yeah, it does. Gerry Adams/IRA were much closer to Freedom Fighters than Yassir Arafat. There's a world of difference between the IRA and the PLO UNTIL the IRA spintered off into the leftist sub-groups with the Baader-Meinhoff, PLO, May 19 Org, Shining Path, etc., etc.
The Sinn-Fein was a recognized political party in both Britain and Northern Ireland.
New York City is home to the United Nations. Are you telling me that the mayor of New York has the discretion to treat foreign dignitaries however he sees fit? LOL.
IF you felt you had to sign up at WA, why are you still posting here. Not enough going on over there.
We arn’t over there posting nor with the wall and sniff test would we be allowed. No truth allowed at WA
2. There was almost no difference between Great Britain's role in Northern Ireland and Israel's role in the occupied territories. Even the terrorist organizations -- the IRA and the PLO -- were remarkably similar at their root.
“thinks all will be fine once he gets terrorists connected to the Internet.....”
——Christ, I’m glad I read those quotes which show Rudy to be just another “visionary” Globalist. And all this time I thought the ONLY thing he had going for him was tht he seemed he would be “tough on Terror”. Now I am not sure he would even be that. I saw him as someone who would be in crisis mode 24/7 possibly, and even that, useful as it is, would not be nearly enough to govern America at this moment. One good start would be keeping a VERY close watch on all suspect mosque activities and rhetoric, and start deporting those judged to be dangerous, while letting the chips fall where they may. This was all going on in NYC while Rudy was Mayor, but nothing very dramatic was done, as I remember, and that’s no to say I didn’t appreciate his returning the big check to the Saudi Prince.Another good step for ANYONE who thinks he is worthy of running this country is seeing to it that NO NEW MOSQUES are constructed, ESPECIALLY not in places without any sizable Muslim population. This is a project of Saudi Arabia, which confidently presupposes that there will eventually be enough Islamic immigrants to fill these mosques, and I am damned if I am going to let THAT go on and get out of control, just like so many things now choking us and tormenting the body politic. I’m still searching for a candidate, or at least a Republican ticket with ONE good candidate on it, top OR bottom.
Yea, I think so. As long as we’re a republic rather under a central authority, the Federal Government is limited on what it can compel municipalities to do. But like you said, there’s an element of disrespect for the office if they don’t cooperate so refusals like Rudy’s should be rarely if ever employed.
“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...”
What the hell are they smoking? Who in there right mind would want another Clinton in office for anything.
As I’ve stated before, if it’s a matter of Rudy vs Hillary no way should he be given another opportunity to fold. Fighting war on terror maybe but up against hillary no way. He didn’t run a great campaign to keep her from senator.
I corrected this in a previous post. Look for it. (I was thinking of the NY Sun).
Did channel that from a dead monarch?
He has the right to treat them in any legal manner he chooses and deal with the political consequences.
Great Britain won a war. Took the land of the people who lived there and awarded it to the nobility. The nobility keep the former owners as tenant farmers, etc, etc, etc. Little by little, the Irish said to Hell with this and eventually through attacks and diplomacy got their own little gig.
israel was set up as a new nation in 1947 after about 6 million Jews went up in smoke during Hitler's "Nazi Period". No sooner were the keys handed over than 6 Arab nations attacked Israel got their asses handed to them.
The Palestians refugeed to Jordan and tried to oust the King of Jordan. He says, "Screw this." and unleashed them unto the Israelis.
Two totally different situations. Thank me for the thumbnail history lesson.
Is there an echo in here?
The "political consequence" is that he exposed himself as a complete fraud, regardless of how many people want to delude themselves otherwise.
Except this Haj Ibrahim dude. He went to a cave in Qumran :)
The four counties of Northern Ireland had been part of Great Britain for far longer than Israel had been in existence, so I have no idea what your point is.
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