Thanks for your carefully framed thoughts on this subject.
Before you arrived here in 2012, Free Republic, in many ways, really was a political antidote to Facebook and the other Leftist media.
Tragically, the energy and the impact of Free Republic began to crumble around 2008.
Conservatives have had no viable national leadership since Newt Gingrich was destroyed around 1996 by dozens of false ethics charges and GOP treachery and torpor.
In 2008, just two years after Free Republic crushed the Bush-McCain Amnesty, the GOP decided to nominate the same traitorous McCain for president. Without question, McCain was the single worst presidential candidate in my long life time.
For the next 8 years, Conservatives had to endure the Outlaw Administration of Barack Obama, even though we worked tirelessly to elect GOP Congressional majorities that never raised a finger to stop him.
2015 brought the candidacy of Donald Trump, which has completely fractured Free Republic in ways that no issue or no candidate has ever fractured it before.
Finally, I think the most important media defeat that Conservatives have ever faced has been the 2016 defection of Matt Drudge to the anti-Trump center-left.
Since the 2000 election, Drudge had forced the Democratic Party to play defense on more national issues than all the other Conservative activists combined.
There is simply no way to replace Drudge, and no way to measure the political damage we have suffered since he walked away.
1) Mr. Newt...his interference in the 2009 special election in NY-23 showde just how “conservative”(/s) he is.
2) “...the energy and the impact of Free Republic began to crumble around 2008.” Purges have played a significant part in that disintegration.