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FreeRepublic | 4/3/07 | Reaganesque

Posted on 04/03/2007 7:24:18 PM PDT by Reaganesque

It is always disappointing to be reminded that there are people in the world who do not like you so much that they are willing to debase themselves and others in order to get their way. We, as conservatives face this from the Left on a day to day basis. But when such action comes from another supposed Conservative, that is truly disappointing.

The posters at DU think nothing of swearing and posting the most filthy, perverted and twisted things about their political rivals. We here at FR are, for the most part, better than that. At least we try to be. Unfortunately, there's always someone who proves that both sides have their ugly side.

I have posted a number of pro-Mitt Romney threads recently as have many others. I discovered this afternoon that several of them have been the victims of childish and down right purile dirty tricks. Now, political dirty tricks are nothing new and nor are they uncommon on either side of the aisle. But some simply cross the line of decency. Such is the case with whomever played their little game of messing with the Keywords on these Pro-Romney threads. Here are four examples:

Romney Tops Republicans in Fundraising
KEYWORDS: ANTICHRIST; CULT; FUNDRAISING; MITTRAPESCHILDREN; ROMNEY; Click to Add Keyword

Why I Think You Should Vote For My Dad
KEYWORDS: 2008; ELECTIONPRESIDENT; ELECTIONS; MITTBEATSHISKIDS; MITTISTHEANTICHRIST; ROMNEY; Click to Add Keyword

Parsing the Polls: Answering the Mormon Question

KEYWORDS: CULT; JOEYSMITHDELUSION; Click to Add Keyword

Romney-Thompson Ticket?

KEYWORDS: ELECTION; FRED; FREDTHOMPSON; MITTISTHEANTICHRIST; ROMNEY; THOMPSON; VP; Click to Add Keyword

People, campaigning can be a hard and painful thing. You have to have a thick skin to run for office and heaven knows, all candidates take their blows, some more than others. But there is such a thing as decency. And this little prank doesn't just cross that line, it obliterates it.

Disagree with the thread? Fine. Present your arguments. You don't like the candidate? Great. Tell me why and make an attempt at intelligent conversation. That's the way this place is supposed to work. But, resorting to such sophomoric, vulgar and quite frankly bigoted childishness is beneath contempt. If you can't manage a reasonable level of maturity, then there's a whole bunch of like minds over at DU you can have fun with.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Free Republic; Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: heywheresmykeywords
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To: Reaganesque

Bump


181 posted on 04/03/2007 9:38:49 PM PDT by Fiddlstix (Warning! This Is A Subliminal Tagline! Read it at your own risk!(Presented by TagLines R US))
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To: Pan_Yans Wife

No, I am asking for reasoned debate. Accusing someone of pedophilic rape is not debate. It is childish. It is puerile. It’s verbal bullying. How can anyone have any kind of a reasoned debate when one side insists on such childish, rhetorical tactics? If anyone wants to quash dissent it is those who use such tactics. Who is more censorious then, the person who points out the verbal bullying or the person doing the bullying?


182 posted on 04/03/2007 9:40:21 PM PDT by Reaganesque
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To: Reaganesque

I hope the moderators can tell who did this and remove them from FR, we certainly don’t need such people on FR!


183 posted on 04/03/2007 9:41:02 PM PDT by pepperdog
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To: The Spirit Of Allegiance
We have no government OR FORUM armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other. John Adams (1735 - 1826)

Well said! Here is one of my favs:

President Lincoln, 1863: ...We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. “It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the Offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

184 posted on 04/03/2007 9:42:30 PM PDT by sevenbak
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To: AmericaUnited

An incitement to anger. An incitement to conflict. Neither of which are conducive to reasoned debate.


185 posted on 04/03/2007 9:42:48 PM PDT by Reaganesque
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To: shaylalala

It won’t get removed until some hits the abuse button.

Gone now.


186 posted on 04/03/2007 9:43:21 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: EternalVigilance

Those are the original Keywords that I filled in when I started the thread. Please note the time stamp on them.


187 posted on 04/03/2007 9:44:15 PM PDT by Reaganesque
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To: Reaganesque

Just post something critical of Michael Savage and watch DU tactics on steroids.


188 posted on 04/03/2007 9:44:38 PM PDT by Natural Law
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To: FredHunter08

More power to you, FRiend. But a republic isn’t just dictated by an internet forum. Get out and work for your supported causes, preferably within the party. Yes, it’s imperfect, and, no, you’re not going to get everything you want.


189 posted on 04/03/2007 9:49:17 PM PDT by IslandJeff (There will be Democrats in heaven, except they'll be too busy organizing the staff)
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To: Reaganesque

The fact that you think keywords... WORDS themselves quash dissent shows how little faith you have in the reader’s ability to discern what the writer meant.

Without using words, no point can be made.

Can I see a FULL list of the words you disagree with? If you DO write them out for me, I’ll know which words YOU are censoring. Thanks.


190 posted on 04/03/2007 9:50:20 PM PDT by Pan_Yans Wife (Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.--William Goldman)
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To: Reaganesque
Those are the original Keywords that I filled in when I started the thread. Please note the time stamp on them.

Well, while certainly not of the egregious type you were primarily complaining about, technically it's still "keyword abuse."

See, the thing is, the management doesn't have a hard and fast policy on keywords. Enforcement has been on a pretty much common sense basis, since some of the best comic relief on FR has appeared in keywords, and they couldn't track it all with a thousand mods anyway.

191 posted on 04/03/2007 9:50:50 PM PDT by EternalVigilance
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To: khnyny
Most people know that there are people on conservative web sites trying to undermine the dialog.

A more insidious problem, IMO, has been the dilution of dialog over the past few months, with the emergence of sleaze/"entertainment" threads that get posts up in the 10s of thousands. Examples are the dead blonde and other celeb gossip; today it's Keith Richards. This trash is readily available in so many other venues, but it's emerging as almost one-third of the content on the Latest Posts page at any given time.

Maybe it's just me, but I find this depressing and discouraging.

192 posted on 04/03/2007 9:52:25 PM PDT by La Enchiladita (Blessed is He who comes in the name of The Lord; Hosannah in the Highest)
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To: Reaganesque; All

I have already mentioned this to a few people, but here goes again.

THIS IS A GAME.

The object of the game is this: drop into any thread and unload any bomb of information you can think of. It doesn’t matter if it’s about Rudy or Mitt or Duncan. What matters is the GAME. After they drop their bomb .. they begin to attract some attention. Pretty soon others begin to arrive onto the thread in order to bolster the claims of the bomb dropper or to add their additional bombs - always with the accompanying 2 or 3 others who will agree with the bomb dropper.

Then .. something magical happens .. all the bomb droppers shut up .. why ..?? because they’re too busy ROTFLTAO while we are going ballistic. They have accomplished the intent of the game .. watching us go ballistic!

The lesson of the GAME. We don’t have to play. If we don’t answer .. the thread dies. If we don’t respond to their insults and their threats and their stupid childish antics .. THE GAME IS OVER!!!

My favorite response .. ROTFLOL!!

This is nothing new .. these same groups were doing the very same thing during the 2000 election. Then, it was Bush is bad, Bush is a drunk, Bush is this and Bush is that. As soon as we all caught on to what they were doing .. the game was over.

REMEMBER .. IT’S A GAME!! They just want the opportunity to laugh at you .. don’t give it to them.


193 posted on 04/03/2007 9:53:54 PM PDT by CyberAnt ("... first time in history the U.S. House has attempted to surrender via C-SPAN TV ...")
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To: Reaganesque

I totally agree with your opinions. This has to stop. Where else can adults share ideas, discuss candidates strengths and weaknesses, but here on FR.

A Rosie O’Donnell thread was hijacked by one of FR’s premiere Rudy bashers today. Now I’ve supported Rudy in the past. I think he’s a great guy. Then I find out his consulting business has Hugo Chavez for a client???? NEXT!

Your “vanity” has a lot of merit, and I hope it will lead to less acrimony on this board.


194 posted on 04/03/2007 9:54:07 PM PDT by TheSpottedOwl (Head Caterer for the FIRM)
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To: IslandJeff
“Get out and work for your supported causes, preferably within the party.”

I do and have.... not necessarily just within the party. There ARE political organizations outside the parties, you know. If conservatives are outnumbered and outshouted in this party, then the party will have left us, not the other way around. There are quite a few "Republicans" who believe that they'd be better off without us.

The Republicans don’t own the NRA, for instance.

“Yes, it’s imperfect, and, no, you’re not going to get everything you want.”

Oh, come on, son. I don’t expect “everything” I want. I DO expect a nominee for the Republican Party to somehow reflect the party’s platform. The platform IS why we peons pull the lever, you know. Without that, the party is just a club.

I will NEVER vote for anyone hostile to the United States Constitution. To do otherwise would, in fact, be that “shunning” you mentioned.

195 posted on 04/03/2007 9:55:44 PM PDT by FredHunter08 (Guiliani! Come and Take Them!)
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To: FredHunter08

“I will NEVER vote for anyone hostile to the United States Constitution. To do otherwise would, in fact, be that “shunning” you mentioned.”

I have to look at the man in the mirror every morning. A vote for Rudy would break the mirror!


196 posted on 04/03/2007 9:59:40 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker ( Hunter/Thompson in 08! Or Rudy/Hillary, if you want America finished off!)
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To: EternalVigilance

Yes, the thread is about abusing the Keyword function, hence the “keyword abuse” keyword.


197 posted on 04/03/2007 10:01:13 PM PDT by Reaganesque
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To: Merry

I will not be contributing this time even though I have written a nice check every quarter for years because I thought this was a place I could support. Instead, in the name of all the hateful, ugly people on this forum, I donated the money to Rudy. I’m not even sure that I will vote for him but I figured he deserved the contribution for the abuse he was taking from fellow Republicans. Had I known what was going on with Romney, I would have donated the money to him in the name of hateful people on FR.

Maybe you can put a stop payment on the check.. if that is how you donated ;-)

seems like an emotional response that in the end, only punishes the forum and those here at FR that do play fair, or try to anyway. jmo


198 posted on 04/03/2007 10:02:13 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... BumP'n'Run 'Right-Wing Extremist' since 2001)
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To: stephenjohnbanker
“I have to look at the man in the mirror every morning. A vote for Rudy would break the mirror!”

Concepts like “honor” and “integrity” and “duty” are lost on the political types...

199 posted on 04/03/2007 10:04:18 PM PDT by FredHunter08 (Guiliani! Come and Take Them!)
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To: Killborn

I’d venture that the gallantry Adams referred to would be a vain and showy, rather than a humble and serving, form of chivalry.

An eagerness to box or duel at any tiny slight, for example.


200 posted on 04/03/2007 10:07:07 PM PDT by The Spirit Of Allegiance (Public Employees: Honor Your Oaths! Defend the Constitution from Enemies--Foreign and Domestic!)
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