Your ramble is spot on and one of the reasons I seldom post here any more.
I know that getting rid of the hyper-critical, down in the mouth posters is impossible, but I am really, really tired of them.
There are a few good threads left with positive, optimistic conservatives but so many of them are ruined by the Other Types.
It's just not interesting to read the same attacks on President Bush or anyone else (like Michael Steele) who isn't a "perfect" conservative.
Amusingly, they often hold Ronald Reagan up as their idol, and Ronald Reagan would never have gotten elected if he had spoken to voters the way these folks post. And probably, had the internet been around during the Reagan years, they would have branded him as a traitor for having a drink with Tip O'Neill.
Good post!
I am very concerned about Obama and his potential for evil, so I post on those threads, and also on Catholic threads. But I really avoid some of the issue-oriented threads because there are so many people in them who are full of hatred and obsessions. It’s possible to disagree with Bush, for example, without calling him hideous names and calling everybody who agreed with him or even liked him a “Bushbot,” which was one of the milder epithets.
I personally think that some of these people are Dem trolls, planted to keep conservatives divided. It worked. And the other sad thing is that it also made FR a much less interesting place, because people were afraid to discuss issues for fear they might draw the fire of the self-appointed arbiters of conservativism (or Dems posing as such!).
As for Steele, we shall see. I hope he’s not too much of a nice guy; that’s been a problem among our people, and was even one of Bush’s problems. I don’t think we have to go to the Rahm Emanuel-type extreme aggressive personality, but I hope Steele is strong enough to stand up for conservative positions.
During the campaign, I shared that thought. But, having seen his Senate campaign close-up, I wasn't quite so sure. It is more than likely, IMHO, that he would have done no better than McCain. His vague and deliberately uncontroversial and unmemorable speaking style is a little like Obama's, but not as good, and he has, again IMHO, absolutely no instinct for the jugular. Perhaps more important, he is not a programmatic thinker. At least he hasn't shown it. In his campaign, like McCain's, there was no theme ... no platform ... no sense what you're supposed to get for your vote. Confusion.
Tellingly, IMHO, he looked very bad in his MD campaign ... didn't even get much of the African-American vote.
Free Republic has become the site in which we eat our own and it is very off-putting
"Family" arguments are brutal. But I don't think you need worry about where FR votes are going. This is more like a revolutionary site, because we are together attempting whether or not to kill (OK "abandon") or cure the Republican Party. It is ironic that the political party that began with a strongly religious crusade to free African-Americans from slavery and paid over 300,000 union lives to succeed, now cannot even get 3% of their descendants to vote for it.
Nowhere is it written on stainless steel that the GOP will ... or is even supposed to ... last forever.
Great post, no need to apologize. I love FR but have read less posts than in the past. I tire of the petty comments, spelling corrections and bickering. I primarily read only the articles and scroll through the comments only on a few topics. I feel some of the true deep thinkers have left FR and those that post often like to hear themselves talk but have little to add to a ‘higher’ discussion.