A Ban on Ron Paul Supporters

A Ban on Ron Paul Supporters

By Kate Phillips

The right-leaning side of the blogosphere, and especially some of the leading Repub-blogs, have been ablaze over the decision by RedState.com to bar comments and diaries from those enthusiastically Web-savvy and driven backers of Representative Ron Paul.

To recap first of all, Leon Wolfe over at RedState, under a headline that included “Life Is Really Not Fair,” wrote on Monday:

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.

Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I’m guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be. Which, judging by your comment history, you really don’t understand, so allow me to offer an alternate explanation: we are a bunch of fascists and we’re upset that you’ve discovered where we keep the black helicopters, so we’re silencing you in an attempt to keep you from warning the rest of your brethren so we can round you all up and send you to re-education camps all at once.

(Early this year, RedState, which features several bloggers, was bought by Eagle Publishing, a company that also owns Regnery Publishing and Human Events, among other ventures that cater to conservative Republicans.)

Now, avid Caucus readers know the Paulites are heavy-duty keyboarding fans of the Republican-libertarian candidate. They try to win every text-messaging contest out there. They complain on our site that Mr. Paul doesn’t get enough, er, the equivalent of ink on The Times’s Web site. We know many of them well.

They’re not prohibited from commenting here, unless they use abusive language or slurs, etc., that don’t meet our guidelines.

But this little dustup has spurred an interesting debate, one that takes place on the left and the right (and on all blogs) over cheerleading for various candidates (Go, Candidate Go!) when it does not further the discussion. More important, some would contend this ban rides up against the so-called democracy of the Internet.

Over at Captain’s Quarters, Ed Morrissey disagreed with RedState’s decision, saying it would more likely hurt the site than Mr. Paul and his supporters. Here’s part of what he had to say yesterday:

… I disagree with Leon’s assumption that these Paul supporters are all or mostly cryptoliberals. Plenty of libertarian-leaning Republicans exist in the party, along with the former Buchananites and isolationists of the GOP. Instead of cutting these people off, it might be better for Redstate to keep engaging them. After all, Paul will not be in the race all that much longer, and we need those voters to stay in the GOP when Paul disappears. There are worse impulses than libertarianism.

Heck, I’d even interview Ron Paul, just to get a chance to challenge him (respectfully) on some of his positions and see how he responds. I put in a request yesterday to do just that, and if we can make it work, we’ll have Rep. Paul on the Heading Right Radio show, where listeners can ask their own questions and continue engaging the Paulites. Engagement can be understandably frustrating, but in the end, it forces us to sharpen our own arguments and challenge our own assumptions — and both are good processes.

For those who live and breathe in the world of the Internet, there’s another piece to this debate, provided today by David All, at TechRepublican.com. He agreed with Mr. Morrissey, adding that Republicans would need the Paul supporters to help defeat — in Mr. All’s choice of a candidate — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And, with more and more Republican sites sprouting up to try to match the left’s Internet strength in fund-raising and online voter engagement during this election cycle, the Paulites provide Mr. All with another point of entry in this debate:

Personally, I recognize that Paul’s support is very, very real, especially in the politics + tech sphere. He is the people-powered Howard Dean candidate of 2008 which I’ve been saying we need to “prove” the importance of an effective Internet strategy. He is that Revolution.

Of course, there was bound to be reaction among the Paulites. And not all of it printable here. At PeachPundit, there’s a sampling of the more offensive write-ins — we’d advise adult-only eyes take a gander to understand why some may be weary of being blasted.