Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Banning blame game over anti-Mormon claims

Excerpts of RedState: We don't ban Mittites, but 'bigotry' claims,Ben Smith, Politico
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... Free Republic founder Jim Robinson affirmed the explicit ban on Romney supporters. But RedState's Erick Erickson -- whose site was also accused of the practice -- said any Romney supporters banned from the site would have been banned for accusing people of "anti-Mormon bigotry":

...  my understanding from talking to the front page writers is that the Romney supporters whose accounts have been turned off at RedState were of individuals who routinely stated that opposition to Romney from other users stemmed from "anti-Mormon bigotry."

We're happy to have the supporters of the various candidates hash things out, but when the argument of choice is just to accuse people of bigotry, we don't want to waste our time or theirs.

UPDATE: Phil Larsen, one of the Romney supporters banned from RedState, emails saying he wasn't accusing anyone of bigotry:

I was the pro-Romney writer banned from RedState, posting under the name "phillarsen", and I can assure you that I was not banned for accusing anybody of anti-Mormon bigotry, as Erick Erickson suggested in his statement published today. I was posting on an open letter to RedState my brother had written. I came across comments from several of the others on the site alleging that he was being paid by the Romney campaign and that he was being dishonest by not owning up to it.


I posted saying that the claim was false and asked that they stop smearing him. I got a reply from a person posting under the name "streiff" who asked me to stop claiming people were smearing Ryan (my brother) and to not "do it again". ... I sent an email to the website last week asking for further clarification as to why I was banned and have not yet received a reply.


While I recognize RedState's right to run the site however they want to, I just wanted to clarify the reason I was banned was not the one that theygave.