I’m not sure I see an important distinction.
***The distinction is in the scope of the thread. This thread has now become primarily antagonistic towards Mitt Romney followers by virtue of the reduced scope. Prior to the change in the title, the scope could have been antagonistic towards all RINOs, which is what the GOP needs as well as what FR needs. Instead, it’s just a beat-up-the-Mitt-followers thread.
Every few years, JimRob generates a great general-scope thread, such as the one that he put up on the front page of FR:
Statement by the founder of Free Republic
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1103363posts
The scope of that thread is very general and FReepers still log onto that thread, even 5 years after it was first generated. But this thread will fizzle away due to its reduced scope. No one will log onto it 3 months from now unless it generates the kind of heat that the Bugzapper thread did. That does not appear to be likely.
Here’s the Bugzapper thread:
Will FR embrace socialism to make way for Rudy Giuliani as a Republican presidential candidate?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1821435/posts
Part of the difference between that bugzapper thread and this thread is that Mitt’s minions are much more polite than TootyFruityRudy’s were. So this thread probably won’t even be close to a Mitt-Follower-BugZapper thread.
If JimRob wanted to clean house of RINOs, he would have kept the thread more general in scope. But it appears he’s just irritated at one particular group of RINOs.