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.
The loss of the CHIEF was a huge blow. I sure miss him.
WOW! You’re right.
Believe me, an hour ago I was reading his posts. His last one (from 2003) was in a thread about abortion. I decided to check out Uncle Bill when I was reading Inspector Harry Callahan’s last posts.
Interesting.... Maybe there was some kind of a system burp.
You could look at it this way:
Y’all, wise and rational types, can man the parapets on the isolated moral high points while us lower forms of rhetorical style patrol the sewers and other low points in an effort to help keep y’all on the heights from getting undermined so easily.
I've noticed that, wardaddy.
Civil discourse is the norm these days.
However, that doesn't mean that there are not differences of opinion.
"maybe being 50 in 6 months has mellowed me..lol"
LOL!
I'm inbetween you and Graybeard.
I didn't need no mellowing. ;o)
LilAngel, you and I are on the same page.
The only difference is that I've seen this before.
It always makes me lurk more than I wanted to, though.
Bless you for stating your opinions once again.
Harpseal (RIP)
LBGA (RIP)
Texas Cowboy (RIP)
Apes For Evolution....a character (RIP)
my memory is a bit out of date on this ...
it was always apparent to me that the Clowns and the departed were very much alike ideologically even though they acted like they hated each other
now that the clowns have nowhere to be, I bet they are at WA with their newly embraced brethren....which is kind of funny
Now that the fight’s over, are we fighting about the fight?
:-)
i’m not fighting anybody....I’m glad to be here.
lots of reasonable folks here....folks willing to substantiate what they spout or they get laughed off
not many other sites out there like that...lots of just name calling
I’m here because some folks stood up for me and I would never shame them
besides the folks that had it in for me have “departed” as they say
now...if I wanted to fight...I could always go to a Civil War thread...lol
i see that I am not the only one who can come back....simply amazing...I hope some of the others straggle in...
No one gives a damn how long you've been here or if you've donated to FR. Neither one is a license for you to bitch and moan week after week about your liberal buddies who got the axe or left to start their temper tantrum anti-freep site. Some of them had been here just as long and donated as much or more than you. Some even said less than what you're saying here and they were shown the door for it.
You defend people who hate conservatives, say that conservatives have had their boot on the neck of the GOP for too long, who call us the trailer park site, who call us the fetus wing of the party, or the Tourettes wing. And that's just what they say in the open forum. What goes on in their exclusive "Salt River" makes that pale in comparison, I'm sure. But I guess none of that shocks you because you've been doing your own trashing of this site and its users in this and other threads. In this thread alone you called us fringe and kooks and all other nonsense.
You seem to be more at home with the losers at WA. You were there just 47 minutes ago. Just get your damned opus over with - this is the most drawn out opus ever. No one wants to hear your crap anymore, drama queen. Get with the program, get out of the way, or just get lost. You've really been working hard to make yourself unwelcome here. If you intend to stay, you need to find a way to get along.
Bump!
I didn’t mean you, wardaddy. I’m sorry I gave that impression!!!
Your post was just the last one, and I tacked my post onto it.
:-)
BUMP what you just posted. Excellent.
I just tried it.
“nobody by that name”
So, you read Reagan's mind? Or you're channeling the dead. The Therapeutic Abortion Act was billed as a limited way for women with health problems to be allowed to have an abortion. There's no way, if Reagan knew what the Democrats were going to do, that he would have signed it. He said as much. The aspersions you cast upon Reagan, despite what he himself claimed, are despicable. You're calling Reagan a pro-abortion Governor who conspired with the Democrats to liberalize abortion and then lie about it. That is what you're implying with the crap that you just posted. I suggest that you knock the Reagan-bashing off, idiot.
Awwww...that hurt my feelings.
;o)
I for one am glad you’re back, wardaddy. You’re smart, principled, experienced, and you have a lot of insight. Again, glad to see ya.
a site that was already 2 months in the planning I hear... course...I watched all this from the outside...stunned....many of us did
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