You are completely wrong if you think that the people who were banned were new comers who only joined FreeRepublic to influence the campaign. They were almost all long term conservatives, if not long term social conservatives.
Sorry about that. The two paragraphs were entirely different points, and I didn’t make that clear. I did not think the purges were of political operatives, but I do think part of the issue here is political operatives coming to the site to hawk their candidates rather than have an objective discussion.