You actually believe that the couple thousand active FreeRepublic posters have that kind of influence?
Sorry, but the vast majority of voters haven't even heard of FreeRepublic and of those with some knowledge, many consider posters here as right wing cult kooks.
No, but the attitudes here are reflective of what a lot of other voters have done this year. Many here, the talk show hosts who pushed one or the other candidate and the masses of “conservative” asses who got their heads up and locked over one candidate early on without ever considering any real alternative all helped to bring this about. Before Thompson dropped from lack of support McCain was not doing all that well. Once he dropped a lot of conservatives and GOP supporters just didn’t vote (look at the low percentage of registered republicans who have voted in primaries since). That allows a non-conservative like McCain and his dem supporters to pack in votes for him. They know that they can beat him and they knew that the only way to do that was to keep the GOP split among several low quality choices. It sure worked.