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.
That makes no sense to me.
I find WA much harder to follow than FR. Best format of any opinion forum around.
That’s how I feel too. How could I have not noticed the purge. I’m here every day and I missed it WAAAAAH!
I was reprimanded once, not sure why, I think I got cranky. ;9)
No real dialog, just chopping meaningless comments.
‘...the fiery online conservative forum Free Republic marked a decade in operation as one of the premier online forums for right-wing political discussion.’
First sentence, sweet! You can’t buy that kind of reporting (lol)
“Paid circulation of 51,000.” How many FReepers are there, Jim?
“They were victimized, they say,... “
That’s just so sad. Sniff.
That’s just so liberal, too.
I recently came out of lurk-mode, because the most vitriolic posters are finally gone. I see it as a major improvement. Though some seem to miss the rudeness, I don’t.
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.)
Some "reporting"...one would think that rather than citing "some conservative bloggers and former commenters," Ms. Sinderbrand would actually quote Jim Rob himself in context. From the April 21, 2007 thread "Will FR embrace socialism to make way for Rudy Giuliani as a Republican presidential candidate?"
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.
[I]f liberalism infiltrates into the Republican party and Republicans start promoting all this socialist garbage, do you think that I or FR will suddenly stop fighting against it? Do you think I'm going to bow down and accept abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, global warming, illegal alien lawbreakers, gun control, asset forfeiture, socialism, tyranny, totalitarianism, etc, etc, etc, just so some fancy New York liberal lawyer can become president from the Republican party?Do you really expect me to do that?
“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.”
For almost a quarter-century, drive-by types have suggested with every Presidential change that Rush Limbaugh's ratings would drop like a rock because either a) there wasn't a Democrat POTUS to pick on, so people would no longer listen, or b) because everyone supported the Democrat President, so people would no longer listen. Such predictions are always wrong.
This "observation" by this anonymous blogger could be described in terms more charitable than "hare-brained" if Alexa ratings meant anything to ad-free, user-driven, all-donation Free Republic. Banner ads, pop-up ads, and Amazon click-through deals have made Hollywood apartment-dwelling gift-shop manager Matt Drudge a self-made Florida beachfront multi-millionaire with a top-rated radio show; it makes sense that Drudge cares about Alexa. That's why on every page, renewed every few minutes with new pop-ups, you see in fine print, "Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers."
Whatever you say about Jim Robinson, don't accuse him of being motivated by the money. If that were the case, why wouldn't he simply have turned into a Rudy cheerleader when Giuliani emerged as the alleged Great Right Hope, and rode the wave of popular support?
I'm wondering who else subscribes to that "popular" theory. I'm guessing only liberals and the fretfully uninformed.
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.
NO. Municipalities CANNOT dictate American foreign policy.
Lot’s of Irish in NY city. Not so many “Palestinians”.
Sinkspur is not banned.
He’s a rare voice of reason at wideawakes, speaking truth about illegal immigratiion.
http://www.wideawakes.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=6596&page=1#Item_0
I've never approved of that kind of behavior, and still don't. That said, there's a certain irony in the fact that the people on the receiving end spent the previous five years relying on the same tactics. Some might say that turnabout is fair play...
LOL! Sounds like you're auditioning for Katie Couric's job.
So am I. ‘Pod.
LOL! Sounds like you're auditioning for Katie Couric's job.
*grin*
Well, I wouldn't say it's fair play. "Schadenfreude" comes to mind though...
Notice he picked as his WA avatar...the 'takes no BS'... Lee Van Cleef. ;^)
Emotions were redlining that night...for chrissakes JimRob called somebody an A$$wipe...a word that meant certain deletion...up till that evening anyway.
And Jim alone banned EVERY SINGLE ONE of the FRiberals on that thread. Maybe you should complain to him about it.
Virtually every one of your examples show me that Peach spoke the truth...when you take the time to put it in context.
Political OPINIONS are often outside the realm of fact; most times they are liberal vs. conservative and in those cases, her views (pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, pro-homosexual agenda, pro-euthasia) were liberal.
Ronald Reagan WAS a Democrat. The Contract with American DID NOT mention abortion or gunrights.
Reagan was a Democrat in a time where almost EVERY Democrat was to the right of most Republicans today and certainly to the right of Rudy.
And I for one am sick and tired of hearing about an abortion bill which Reagan reluctantly signed being used as a reason for Republicans to abandon the pro-life platform. And what does Reagan have to do with the Contract with America?
Like most posters, they responded in the manner in which people post to them.
Whether you want to admit it or not, they were much more mainstream in all aspects than the kooky fringe in here.
And they did not suffer fools gladly.
And you all know who you are. LOL!
I've got nine years in here...and like Ronald Reagan once said...(paraphrased) "I PAID FOR THIS MICROPHONE".
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