— (updated) A couple of days ago, I referred to the “knuckle-dragging Freeper” point of view on the California primary, a reference to Simberg’s statement of solidarity with the Freepers:
The folks over at Free Republic are masticating Ken’s column and spitting it out. Many are making the same points that I do (though in a less genteel way). But then, I like Ken…
Some of the Fox News Blog Squad (ex-king Reynolds, musical Layne, and not quite a Fox-blogger Welch) took my remark as an attack on one of their own, when they really shouldn’t have. To see the Freeper mentality at work, go look at this thread on the Free Republic web site. On election night, I told the Freepers that Gray Davis was the happiest man in California, since he got the candidate, Simon, he felt most able to beat.
The Freeper response was typical: “Crawl back to DemocraticUnderground.com where you belong;” “Red Davis would be well advised not to get too confident;” “You must be very proud of Red Davis;” “…..I checked out your profile, and “There’s no Freeper by that name” showed up on my screen. What happened, Demorat?”; “Why don’t you be honest and just declare the fact that you are a liberal?”; “Republicans want to chose their candidate, not have the party do it for them.”
The response of Free Republic’s owner was to delete my post (number 23 on the thread – look for it) and terminate my account. This is the kind of insularity that cults always use to keep their members protected from reality. At least it won’t be long until their lawsuit concludes and they’ll be out of business.
This segues into a rant on campaign finance reform, which is bad because it empowers the groups at the extremes of the political spectrum, but I don’t have time for that now.