Last month, the Republican Party rolled out a website called America Speaking Out, which the GOP described as “an open forum, however, where all Americans are welcome to respectfully offer their opinions, regardless of party affiliation and whether we endorse them or not. It is our hope the active engagement of the American people will produce a robust debate that will aid in the construction of a new American agenda.”
How robust is the debate? How strong is the Republican insistence on its version of “respect” in that debate? We’ve known for some time that America Speaking Out simply won’t allow posts with a variety of words — from the predictable “sex” to the unpredictable “shells” — to be posted on the website in the first place. But it’s apparent that the GOP is also weeding out contributions with a thick blade after they’ve been posted. Consider America Speaking Out’s section of ideas on Infrastructure. On June 14, 56 people were listed as posted 70 ideas in the section. This morning, 55 people are listed as having posted 69 ideas in the section. At the very least, one person has had their idea deleted; quite possibly many more have been deleted, to be replaced by new ideas. In another example, America Speaking Out’s Strengthening Families section featured 164 people posting 201 ideas there. But by this morning, just 158 people were featured as having posted 179 ideas.
Why did some people have their ideas deleted? Repetitive cut-and-paste spamming of the forum seems to be acceptable to the GOP, at least when they are conservative ideas. Take the humble contributor “Saint Paul,” who has nominally speaking added 109 ideas to the America Speaking Out website to date. His ideas remain online, despite frequent cut-and-paste repetition. For instance, the idea “impeach Obama” by Saint Paul appears multiple times, Exodus 20:2-17 is featured by Saint Paul seven times, the text of a bill to call out search-and-rescue squads to inspect women’s wombs for zygotes shows up six times, and a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush in which he identified himself as a Christian has been placed by Saint Paul five times. This activity is fine by the Republican Party, but other ideas are being deleted.
What are these ideas that have been deleted? What is the standard for inclusion of some ideas and deletion of other ideas? How skewed are the ideas that we see on “America Speaking Out” as a result? I’d like to know, but the Republican Party isn’t telling.
An update: “Saint Paul” never had his cut-and-paste repetitive messages deleted by the Republicans. Other ideas were deleted.