Who Reads FrumForum?
When I started blogging at FF, I thought my posts would reach conservatives. Lately though, I seem to be attracting a much different readership.
Here's the official description for FrumForum:
FrumForum.com is a site edited by David Frum, dedicated to the modernization and renewal of the Republican party and the conservative movement.
And, indeed, my connection with FrumForum (formerly called NewMajority) arose at the end of 2008, when I sent David Frum a piece I'd written on lessons for conservatives from the recent election. Frum recommended that I publish it at his own site-to-be, and it duly appeared on January 14, 2009.
Since then, I've occasionally sent Frum a blog entry, and he posts about half of them, maybe a bit more. I recently went through the website and found, to my surprise, that I've posted over 30 items there over the past two years, a bit more than one a month.
Then . . .
One refreshing thing about posting at FrumForum is that I'm reaching conservatives -- a group that I don't interact with much in real life. I get some surprises. For example, my blog on Americans' opinions on gay rights (an overwhelming majority supports antidiscrimination laws, but 48% would forbid gays as public school teachers) elicited the following comment:
But why should conservatives care? We aren’t interested in framing a trivial issue to make ourselves appear more palatable to groups who aren’t going to vote for us anyway. . . . Now if Gelman had put forward an analysis which showed how gay rights could be made unpopular in almost every state in the union, then that would have made his analysis worth reading.
And this one:
People know intuitively that #1. Marriage must be distinguished as superior to all other relationships and exclusively male/female #2.Children and young people should be free from homosexual propaganda. Now this is all very reasonable, except the homosexual lobby is not reasonable. They demand absolute moral equivalency. Tolerance is not enough; when they use that word they mean capitulation.
Seeing these comments gave me the warm feeling that I was reaching an audience I wouldn't normally have a change to communicate with. And if you looked at what I was writing in the linked blog, it was facts, with opinions and comments on political strategy inserted only inasmuch as they were supported by the facts. See also my follow-up here, which brought some more heated comments.
And now ...
When I looked at my FrumForum comments more recently, I noticed that they mostly seemed to hold attitudes that I associate with liberal Democrats!
For example, my blog on public opinion about torture received six comments, five of which were anti-torture and one of which did not address torture but was unambiguously pro-Obama and anti-Bush.
My blog about the bill to extend unemployment benefits received nine comments, eight of which appeared to support the Democrats on the issue. For example:
The filibuster is stupid. The Senate is already undemocratic in make-up (and purposefully so to empower uninhabited places like North Dakota with the same number of senators as California, Texas, etc.). A filibuster is piling more undemocratic rules on top of that.
And:
If the GOP think cutting off peoples unemployment benefits with do them good in November think again. Just look at the comments here from now ex republicans. You can’t piss off 15 million people and not get hurt.
And:
“Republicans tell unemployed: Screw you, we want to win in November!”
Based on this unscientific sample, I think FrumForum has a much different readership than it used to.