I sensed the reason Jim Robinson has called for a truce is that, being this year is going to be a very major mid-term election year coming up and since this is one of the big conservative websites, if not the most well-known, maybe some liberals are going to come to look around to see if there is any in-fighting among conservatives, thus to trying to justify their divide and conquer efforts. Just a simple thought.
I think also, there are some strong supporters (read: donors) of FreeRepublic who happen to be Apple customers. The environment on the Apple tech threads had gotten so toxic, with the trolls and flamewars, it was at the point where a number people were ready to give up and leave. Jim (and we all) can't have that.