Political misstatement of the week

Oh my. The Plank makes a rather startling error:

And a Scots-Irish war veteran as the Republican nominee complicates predictions about whom Kennedy Country will support come November.

To the vast, vast majority of Irish-Americans who are Catholics (or descended from same), Scots-Irish≠Irish. Scots-Irish are also known as the Protestant bastards who were resettled in Ireland as a part of Britain's colonial policy for subjugating the island. Many of them joined the various rebel movements in the 19th century, but many more did not. Ian Paisley, the raving nutloon bigot First Minister of Northern Ireland, who is fond of referring to Catholics as "vermin" who "breed like roaches", and popularized the slogan "A Protestant nation for a Protestant people"¹, taps into that community, even though I believe he is not himself Scots-Irish. Relations between the Scots-Irish and the Irish in America weren't all that much friendlier.

Now, this is all distant history, and while there might be some wizened old professional Irishman out there declaring that he won't vote for an Orangeman, he'd be an island in a sea of puzzled indifference. But McCain sure as hell isn't going to pick up votes from the Irish Catholic community because of his heritage.



¹As of 1997, this slogan was still posted on an arch that spanned the main roadway going into the (half Catholic) town my family came from in Armagh. "Still" is perhaps the wrong word, as the arch, made of tubular steel, couldn't have been erected much earlier than the mid-eighties.

Update Alex Massie, one of my favorite Scots, and an alum of Trinity College in Dublin, points out that "A Protestant State for a Protestant Nation" originally came from James Craig the Scots-Irish first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.