Posted on 10/23/2007 9:41:03 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
The ubiquitous and web-savvy supporters of Ron Paul now have one less forum in which to vent their rage.
The influential conservative blog Redstate.com placed a ban last night on all Paul commentary from readers who are recent arrivals to the blog.
Paul's followers are angry that the Libertarian congressman can’t seem to get traction in national polls as he bids for the Republican presidential nomination.
Paul — a representative from Texas who ran for president in 1988 on the Libertarian Party ticket — remains mired in the low single digits.
The post on Redstate, “Attention, Ron Paul Supporters (Life is *REALLY* Not Fair),” begins, “Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal.”
Redstate founder Erick Erickson said he woke up this morning bombed with hundreds of e-mails, “the overwhelming majority very angry.” His own readers, though, loved the ban.
“It is the most recommended user diary in Redstate history,” he said.
Paul's energetic online supporters managed to help him raise more than $5 million in the third quarter of this year, roughly tying Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
They’ve also ticked off an awful lot of people, including, apparently, Leon H. Wolf at Redstate, who calls them “annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting.”
Wolf writes he is tired of “responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans.”
Erickson said that he and the regular Redstate readers had just had enough.
“They’re terribly annoying and they don’t add to the debate. If people are adding to the debate we don’t have a problem with them coming here. But they’re just coming to promote Ron Paul. They talk over everyone. They yell at everyone,” he said.
Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said he questioned "the judgment of the decision," but added: "They are a private entity and they are certainly within their rights to do as they see fit.
"I'm sure there are a few Ron Paul supporters who get a little shrill," Benton said . "All we can control is what comes from our campaign."
The ban against Paul-supporting is not categorical, Erickson and Wolf made clear.
“Hey, we’re sure *some* of Ron Paul’s supporters really are Republicans. They can post at any one of a zillion Ron Paul online forums. Those who have *earned* our respect by contributing usefully for a substantial period of time will be listened to with appropriate respect. Those who have not will have to *earn* that respect by contributing usefully in the other threads ... and not mentioning Ron Paul. Given a month of solid contributing, send one of us an email and we’ll consider lifting the restriction on your account,” Wolf writes.
Wolf then shut down the comment thread for the post to avoid the deluge of irritation that was headed his way.
Erickson forwarded to Politico a number of the e-mails as examples of that irritation. “You are banning FREE SPEECH. Perhaps next you can forbid discussion of Democratic candidate names. It is a sad day for America when hypocrites who think they are right try to shovel their propaganda onto the rest of us. What goes around comes around,” wrote one reader with an e-mail exchange at socialheart.com.
Erickson finds this sort of complaint hypocritical itself. “So much for their respect for private property,” he said.
Even Duncan Hunter said that troops should be rotated out of Iraq within a year.
Now that their "Paul strategy" has completely failed, the MSM is trying to trick us by reinventing Mike Huckabee. For some reason we are supposed to forget Huckabee's disgraceful words and actions regarding illegal aliens. I suppose some of the same idiots will be fooled by this as well. But it too will fail.
Kudos to RedState.com for seeing through the MSM manipulation.
“The hypocrisy of hating Ron Paul for a single issue while embracing other imperfect candidates is astounding. “
This single issue is the determining factor of our future. If we back down and the Jihad declares victory, will we ever have the resolve to stand up for freedom again? Will any ally ever be willing to join us in a fight for survival when it counts? Why would anyone stand with us when our actions betray our words?
Will any country stand for freedom and liberty? Ever?
Paul voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act. He voted against the Goode and Traficant amendments because they were redundant.
Enforcing the borders is the job of the executive branch, not the legislative. The President can easily dispatch troops to the border without legislation.
Thank you and thank you for the graphic.
Thank you
Sorry FRiend, you can blame Ron Paul for a lot of stuff if you wish...plague of famine, frogs, locusts, but he is only 1/435 of one half of one of three levels of Gubmint.
The GOP is perfectly capable of wrecking itself and than resurrecting every few years when they get back to their core principles of limited government. Meyer, Buckley and Goldwater started the Conservative revival, Nixon ruined it by creating more Gubmint agencies like OSHA and the EPA, than Reagan performed CPR, than his VP promised "no new taxes" and his son gave us Medicare Part D and an amnesty bill. When they get back to their roots, they will win.
"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path".
--Ronald Reagan
Thanks. Take care...
Two different motives. Conservatism requires thought. Liberalism is easy. Now that we are there, we have and should slaughter all the islamofascists. It's like a roach motel there. The Jihadis check in but they don't check out. Then we can leave, declare victory and leave the left wing anti war moonbats holding the bag that contained what they thought was surrender and humiliation for President Bush...which they instead found out contains the remnants of their 2 year reign of US Socialism or a lame attempt at it.
Exactly! We have a Constitution, but if we just ignore it, what moral voice do we have to push for others to adopt a Constitutional government (especially against their religion)?
Will any country stand for freedom and liberty? Ever?
I doubt it. But I have to have hope that it can happen, and the closest I see for that now is Ron Paul.
Will he win? What a longshot. But at least with his campaign, some young people are learning that conservatism doesn't really mean Nanny-State control and drunken-sailor spending.
You might be surprised that there were a few waving the American flag and offering support for the troops against the Workers Party crowd at a rally last weekend.
I'm sure that many FReepers would insult Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Mason, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, or John Adams, were they around now. (Okay, Hamilton would deserve it! ;-)
But without such principled nutcases who fought against many of the things anti-Paulites love, where would we be today?
I, for one, am sick of using taxpayer funds to refill the glass for those straw-suckers...though I can read only "Halliburton" and not the other. I would add "dishonest Iraqis" as the other straw, though, if that's not what it says.
One can be against the way the war has been handled, and how funds have been disbursed, without being anti-American, you know. Believing otherwise is supporting the lefties who say you have to vote for lots of spending..."or you don't care."
“Win” is a nebulous term.
He has about as much chance of winning the GOP nomination as you and me, and I wasn’t even born in the USA so I can’t run for President.
He can “win” by running as a third party candidate and siphoning votes from Hillary and forcing the presumptive GOP candidate to pay attention to the libertarian portion of their base.
If Paul doesn’t run as a third party candidate and is just doing this to roll over his campaign funds for his congressional race or worse...to drive up his speaking and lecture fees...
Than I will be pissed.
We might even have to re-enact the Pedro Martinez/Don Zimmer fiasco.
I might as well post it here, too.
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2007/10/23/still-crazy-after-all-these-years.php
Ron Paul is resented because he and his supporters constantly claim there’s “no difference” between us and them. Of course, there isn’t, to any Liberterian.
The erosion of the constitution began in earnest in 1933. Why wait until a quitter runs for president to bring it up?
You know who is to blame for allowing our constitution to be trashed? You, me our parents and grandparents allowing it to happen.
You seem to think that Ron Paul can wave his magic wand and restore it. If he was actually elected, he would be blocked in enacting 95% of what he wants to do by both parties.
Are you kidding? It began way before that.
Pushing for others to adopt a constitutional government? I seem to remember millions of Iraqi's risking their lives to vote.
Thank you for making my point.
You know who is to blame for allowing our constitution to be trashed? You, me our parents and grandparents allowing it to happen.
You have to go back a few generations more...my ancestors were strong supporters of Lincoln.
You seem to think that Ron Paul can wave his magic wand and restore it.
Not at all.
If he was actually elected, he would be blocked in enacting 95% of what he wants to do by both parties.
You're optimistic. I actually expect it would be more than 95%. But that's no excuse to support further destruction of our nation. Do you not think that blocking (stalling) the steady march of the left is better than joining in and growing government? Besides, what fun it would be to witness the Congress fight against the American people--with the President on the peoples' side!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.