Posted on 12/01/2002 1:23:55 PM PST by BraveMan
What a long way Free Republic has come! From its birth in 1996 as what began as just a place where hardcore conservatives to post the latest news and analyze it, Free Republic two years later had a significant role in the neutralization of the Clintons - as it became the organizing point for enormous protests ridiculing Bill Clinton over Monicagate everywhere he went in the U.S. early in Monicagate throughout 1998. Some top liberals even blame Freepers for Al Gore's defeat.
Very early in Monicagate, Freepers brought Free Republic out of just being a sort of giant cybercafe for dissidents to talk things over - and made it into a very-effective organizing point for giant protests against liberals and liberalism, like the one in Houston at a Clinton fundraiser that not only like most greeted Clinton with hundreds of dissidents ridiculing him for his adultery and perjury, but even found a fire engine to hang a giant sign on that read "Bill Clinton Is A Four-Alarm Fraud." Freepers in Florida hung a giant sign on a cabin cruiser to float in a strategic position just offshore a fundraiser of his there. And here in North Carolina, about 30 Freepers picketed an Al Gore fundraiser in Raleigh's Volvo district in May 1999 - some dressed as Buddhist monks. The Clintons/Gore Regime just couldn't escape the conservatives from hell.
Other liberals were no luckier. The "Rosiecott" that ended Corporate America's willingness to indulge leftist politics was in large part organized on Free Republic. Freeper-organized boycotts were to Rosie O'Donnell's career what a later gay boycott was to advice-talk radio host Dr. Laura's.
But - just six years after its founding, just four years after the height of its power - Free Republic today is largely a total waste of time. As a reader commented, it isn't accomplishing anything anymore - with the giant protests against liberals formerly organized on it by Freepers over; as he agreed last week, the sole positive things it now does are to provide rapid dissemination of news, even from small-town dailies, to dissidents everywhere - and to guide dissidents to the various dissident newspapers that really are hardcore.
Some social issues are almost unmentionable on Free Republic today. More than one Freeper has griped that posted articles on immigration often just disappear. Other Freepers have been just blacklisted from Free Republic - for offending the sensibilities of founder Jim Robinson or the small clique under him that largely actually runs Free Republic now.
Today, Free Republic is every bit as handicapped as founder Jim Robinson - but by another problem. To all too many Freepers now, anyone calling themselves a Republican is God's brother - and cannot be criticized, no matter how Clintonesque their views on many social issues may be. And to all too many Freepers now, Pres. Bush really is God - uncriticizable, no matter what.
To make Free Republic great again, a number of things have to happen. First, all involved - from ordinary Freepers to "JimBob" himself - have to accept that having an (R) next to one's name doesn't make a politician beyond criticism. Second, all involved must also accept that Pres. Bush isn't God. And then, all Freepers must commit to doing again what made Free Republic great - hounding any politician at odds with Red Nation's masses on social issues; if that means picketing Pres. Bush everywhere he goes if he hints at amnesty for illegal aliens or tacit support of racial quotas, that's what it takes.
Free Republic didn't become great by being a Chinese-style "Democracy Wall" for dissidents to post articles from "mainstream" newspapers to and then discuss them. It can only became great again the same way it originally got great.
What do trucks have to do with amnesty? As to the Amnesty threads none have announced any amnesty have they? You and your Tancredo brigade are, without equal, the funniest bunch of bunker dwellers I have seen around here.
You're right, and thanks for adding that.
I'm sorry that you can not seem to comprehend reality, even you say you know it. The republicans do NOT have the Senate. Even pretending that we don't have Rinos who may end up voting with the Demodogs outright, and pretending that Breaux (sp?) and Miller may be counted as Dinos on many cases for the president, there is virtually nothing that can be done with only 54 Senate votes against concerted opposition. The only hope the President has is that such a stand by the Demodogs will slaughter them at the polls in '04 and '06 and beyond. Any attitude such as you have expressed that he and conservatives can somehow force their will in the Congress in the present circumstances will doom that possibility and any hope of EVER gaining passage of an even modest conservative agenda.
Get used to it: a few items may be able to pass the present Senate, but Lott and the President will have to promise some liberal agenda items be passed, or they will not even get those few done. This IS the way our country works. (Recall that when LBJ passed the horrifying bills that really crucified this country he had something like a 68-32 split in the Senate.) Until there are a sufficient number (read that as 60, for my purposes) of conservatives, not Republicans, in the Senate, very small steps will have to be slowly taken to reverse the political situation in this country.
Anyone who has such unrealistic, overly high expectations, such as those you expressed here, I suspect of being a Demodog (or demagogic libertarian) themselves. It is exactly the tactics which were being employed by D'ashole and the others of his ilk in an attempt to discredit the President by saying 'he failed to do...' when the blame for that was squarely in their lap.
The Republicans do have a golden opportunity, but that opportunity this year is not in passing a conservative agenda, but in solidifying the trend toward a more conservative government which will allow us at some time in the future can pass a conservative agenda, or at least roll back the leftist agenda which has been enacted. That golden opportunity will be squandered by overreaching and expecting too much, and it is exactly what the demodogs (and libertarians) are hoping for.
Thanks for applying some truth in advertising, MM. There are clearly some others who like to monopolize some threads that it would be nice to have similar perspective about, so their statements can be properly evaluated.
And as long as one county somewhere in the fifty states elects a democrat dogcatcher we will hear more excuses from the gop as to why this lone democrat thwarted their grand plans to restore the Republic to it's Constitutional roots.
democrats = bolsheviks
republicans = mensheviks
Regards
J.R.
What a great idea! I'll have to remember that if the opprotunity ever presents itself again...a really inexpensive billboard! LOL!
Keep on FReepin'! We need to show the clueless moron author of this article that he's got his head up his butt.
I don't go hunting for diamonds in cesspools.
CD
If the employers would take a stand, we wouldn't have this problem. As long as they can find work, they will come. We need to arrest the employers. If you arrest enough of them, it will stop.
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