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[07/23/99]

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As impeachment becomes a distant memory, and most politically minded Americans look forward to the 2000 election, 300 members of Free Republic, the Internet-based organization that has been at the forefront of the anti-Clinton crusade, continued their low-intensity war against the president.

During the height of the Clinton sex scandal, Free Republic became the online home for the anti-Clinton crusade, with its "latest posts" page drawing 50,000 individual visits per day. Today, its traffic is reportedly down to less than half of what it was a year ago. Free Republic's fragmented and fringe conservative message may be the reason for a recent decline in public support. When information surfaced recently that Free Republic allowed messages with racial slurs to be posted on its site, Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg removed links to the site. Free Republic's founder, Jim Robinson, has been sued by the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and a visit to the site today will reveal a list of conspiracy theories tying former President George Bush to drug dealing by the CIA.

While its numbers may have diminished, there is still a loyal core in the organization that turned out to take another shot at Clinton. On Saturday, the group gathered for its "Treason is the Reason" rally in Washington, ostensibly to protest the Clinton administration's ties to China and the facts surrounding the transfer of top-secret military technology to the Chinese government -- but in fact it was more of the same.

The 300 people who showed up at Saturday's rally fell far short of the turnout at past events, where crowds had grown to 4,000. Some members of the crowd walked away disappointed, sensing an ebb in momentum from the glory days of the Clinton impeachment scandal. But Paul Rice, a Free Republic member from Virginia, said he still believes in Free Republic and Judicial Watch's pursuits against the president. "My bottom line is that no one is above the law and we have to hold all people equal to the law," he said, but added that he does not agree with the underlying conservative tones of the organizations.

The Freepers, as they call themselves, gathered first at the exit of the White House tour route to hand out pamphlets and chat with passing tourists. The official rally was co-sponsored by Judicial Watch, a Washington public interest organization currently involved in 31 legal cases, most of which are related to the Clinton administration.

"Monica Lewinsky can't nuke Los Angeles -- at least not yet," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, in his opening remarks. "As the result of Bill Clinton looking the other way -- we think in exchange for campaign contributions -- China now has the greater ability to destroy our cities, to destroy our children and harm the United States, and there is no one investigating this except for Judicial Watch."

Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, came to the stage with a standing ovation. After a moment of prayer for John F. Kennedy Jr., the crowd listened intensely to Klayman, who is seen as the leader of this last effort to bring down the Clinton administration.

"Our ancestors did not come to this country to permit the wholesale bribery and corruption that exists, not just in the White House, but right up there on Capitol Hill -- among both political parties," Klayman said as rain dampened the stage and lightening flashed in the sky.

This strange confluence of fringe conservatives and sworn Clinton enemies rallied behind a neo-Cold War banner, honing in on Communist China as the new red menace. In addition to being the largest threat to our national security, China was tagged by Steven Mosher, president of Population Research Institute, a human rights organization working to end population control, as a savage land of forced birth control and moral turpitude.

"You've heard about the one-child policy," Mosher told the heavily pro-life crowd. "What you may not know is China's one-child policy is enforced by means of forced abortions, forced sterilizations and forced IUD insertions."

The crowd listened quietly as Mosher told graphic stories of forced abortion, infanticide and religious persecution.

But after the tangential China references, the protesters focused on the core issue -- Clinton himself. With the relatively small crowd, the rally felt like winter league baseball -- a sort of political dress rehearsal in the political off-season to get in shape for the upcoming campaign. But it was still a great chance to get some anti-Clinton ya-yas out.

Next page | "Hey, there are children in the crowd!"