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.
Read post 1224 on this thread and follow the link back to the original thread.
Does no one think it rude to ask an American in Iraq which side they are on? Suppose someone says this to your kid.
We would be able to see the same thing over at WA, but the WAckos think they are being all sneaky doing their anti-FReeping on a closed thread.
Yep. It’s called “Salt River” or something like that. If you use their search function, you can see that anti-FReeper WAcko “X” was last active two minutes ago. But then you use the search to find their posts and the last post it will let you see was four hours ago.
What are you talking about? The existence of God is self-evident; as is the truth that he made you, and endowed you with every right you possess.
And if you want to join, you have to wait for the banned anti-FReeper WAckos to make you a member. It seems that there are membership standards that you must have in order to be an anti-FReeper WAcko. You will notice that NOWHERE on their site do they describe themselves as conservatives, which may be the only honest thing most of them are doing.
Self evident is not scientifically evident. Self evident also does not imply one religious teaching over another. Also, self evident is a synonym for faith.
Again, that self-evident truth is the bedrock of American liberty.
I'm sure there are some old earth creationists, but they don't seem to be as interested in arguing, probably because they accept most of the evidence that evolutionists do but take on faith that these events happened by some sort of serial creation. Young earth creationists absolutely reject all of the evidence.
You have evidence that the earth's magnetic field strength increased during the polarity fluctuations?
It appears to have remained at the same level for quite a bit of geological time. It sometimes drops suddenly before recovering, and sometimes these drops are followed by a reversal. It's generally accepted that the magnetic field is driven by a geodynamo and thus will not decay for quite some time.
You seriously cannot make the analogy between SETI and evolution?
No, you said that they were analogous, I said they were not.
Therefore, one cannot assume that an ordered signal from outspace automatically has an intelligent cause when at the same time, more complex minimal life on earth came from purely natural causes.
I was with you until this point. As I said before, evolution is a process in which complexity is built by descent with modification and natural selection among various phenotypes. Can you propose a mechanical method of generating a complex electromagnetic signal by iterative modification of a simpler signal with some sort of selection? I can't think of one.
Therefore, if evolution is true, no scientist can turn around and tell me that organized signals from outer space are necessarily an indication of intelligent life, since for life forms, we believe otherwise.
Again, as I said, we would assume initially a signal had a nonbiological source and rule out these possibilities first, and even then many people (such as myself) would remain skeptical.
I think you are placing too much importance on SETI and misreading the general attitude towards it. I tend to think it's an exercise in futility.
Let me ask you this, at a minimum, what complexity existed in the first life-form that Darwin says we all came from?
Well, Darwin didn't suppose much about it since he didn't even know what DNA was. He had a "warm pond" hypothesis, but realized science hadn't reached the point where he could actually make any progress in determining that.
Did this first life form possess any DNA?
Where are you drawing the line calling it "life"? A lot depends on how you define that.
The last common ancestor contained DNA.
What capabilities/functions did this first life form possess?
Depends on when you happened to look at it. Initially probably copying RNA, probably then synthesizing peptides, later DNA, much later synthesizing lipids. Since we weren't there, we don't know the details.
Please spare me the abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution.
It doesn't, but I'm willing to humor you because abiogenesis interests me. :-D
It has everything to do with evolution, because non-creation based evolution depends entirely upon this event first occurring.
Once again, we're talking about two different things. Evolution postulates the existence of an initial organism and then explains what happens from there on out. Before the first organism we have chemistry that eventually becomes chemistry with selection and at some point the evolution of early lifeforms.
Do not forget that some evolutionists do think that there is a God who started the ball rolling.
don-o isn’t banned. He posted today.
Thanks! :-)
Tony Snow only had his account and posts deleted because he became White House Press Secretary. Prior to that, he posted quite often as a talk radio host.
So you're full of it.
Full of what? Someone in politics didn’t want to be associated with FR. His posts were wiped clean, along with google and Wayback. That’s a lot of trouble just to take a political appointment.
What makes you think a candidate for president would want to be associated with FR?
Personally, I have liked being on FR. I don’t get upset when someone says I’m stupid, or someone tells me to go play in traffic. That’s just part of discussing controversial topics on the internet.
But I’m surprised at what is deemed acceptable and what isn’t. Apparently insulting Americans serving in Iraq is now acceptable.
don oh
he was a vitriolic atheist.
Personally I would hate to see you go play in traffic... you might damage someone's expensive car.
Are you really that obtuse? Has it occurred to you that there may have been other reasons for this that had nothing to do with Tony Snow and everything to do with the White House?
I think you make my point. Private individuals and anonymous people find this site useful for news and opinion, but no politician having a good chance of winning would publicly accept an endorsement from FR.
But none of this is relevant to the point I wish to make, which is there has been a change of priorities over the years. Specifically, the military is no longer a priority, veterans are no longer given leeway to speak their minds, FReepers are allowed to post contempt for Americans serving in Iraq if they defend the wrong Republican.
And there is an underlying implication that Hillary Clinton would make a better president than some of the front running Republicans.
Maybe Jim could shed some light on this, but my guess would be that the White House would not want an appointee offering opinions in a manner that could be misconstrued. But, if you are so concerned about the public perception of FR, maybe YOU should leave.
But none of this is relevant to the point I wish to make, which is there has been a change of priorities over the years. Specifically, the military is no longer a priority, veterans are no longer given leeway to speak their minds, FReepers are allowed to post contempt for Americans serving in Iraq if they defend the wrong Republican.
YOU are the only one who seems to have this misconception.
And there is an underlying implication that Hillary Clinton would make a better president than some of the front running Republicans.
Is that a new way of saying that we have to nominate Roody or we're stuck with Hitlery?
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