Secret GOP Weapon: The Scots-Irish vote.

[XemaSab]

by JAMES WEBB (Senator from Virginia)

To an outsider George W. Bush's political demeanor seems little more than stumbling tautology. He utters his campaign message in clipped phrases, filled with bravado and repeated references to God, and to resoluteness of purpose. But to a trained eye and ear these performances have the deliberate balance of a country singer at the Grand Ole Opry.

Speaking in a quasirural dialect that his critics dismiss as affected, W. is telling his core voting groups that he is one of them. No matter that he is the product of many generations of wealth; that his grandfather was a New England senator; that his father moved the family's wealth South just like the hated Carpetbaggers after the Civil War; that he himself went North to Andover and Yale and Harvard when it came time for serious grooming. And as with the persona, so also with the key issues. The Bush campaign proceeds outward from a familiar mantra: strong leadership, success in war, neighbor helping neighbor, family values, and belief in God. Contrary to many analyses, these issues reach much farther than the oft-discussed Christian right. The president will not win re-election without carrying the votes of the Scots-Irish, along with those others who make up the "Jacksonian" political culture that has migrated toward the values of this ethnic group.

At the same time, few key Democrats seem even to know that the Scots-Irish exist, as this culture is so adamantly individualistic that it will never overtly form into one of the many interest groups that dominate Democratic Party politics. Indeed, it can be fairly said that Al Gore lost in 2000 because the Democrats ignored this reality and the Scots-Irish enclaves of West Virginia and Tennessee turned against him.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005798

After reading this article, I wonder if the Scots-Irish are turning out heavily for Hillary.

From further down in the article:

The Scots-Irish comprised a large percentage of Reagan Democrats, and contributed heavily to the "red state" votes that gave Mr. Bush the presidency in 2000. The areas with the highest Scots-Irish populations include New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, northern Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, southern Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and parts of California, particularly Bakersfield. The "factory belt," especially around Detroit, also has a strong Scots-Irish mix.

Sounds to me like a bunch of states and areas Hillary won, plus some southern states where the African-American vote may have overwhelmed the Scots-Irish vote. :shrug:

[RichardRay]

1. Not a monolithic block!

Scots-Irish here. An early defector...

[whistler162]

2. I thought Senator Clinton had the Scotch vote....

oopps that is the whiskey vote!

never mind.

[RichardRay]

8. You're forgiven, as you know the difference between Scots and Scotch

[XemaSab]

3. Obviously we're not monolithic!

:hi:

But I found this an interesting article nevertheless.

And I wonder what McCain's ancestry is...? :think:

[terrell9584]

4. NE Florida is scots-irish

NW Florida is not. Before all the hotels came in it was composed of immigrants and people from the major gulf cities who used it as a retreat. Today, it is the nest of the snowbirds. Scots-Irish Florida only begins east of Panama City

[marylanddem]

5. This Scots-Irish Democrat feminist is solidly Obama -

One of our strongest traits is our independence - many of our ancestors fought in the American Revolution because we hated British rule so much - so please don't paint with a broad brush...

[XemaSab]

7. Hey, Jim Webb's the one painting with the broad brush, not I

But if you look at areas that Webb calls out as having heavy Scots-Irish populations, Hillary did VERY well in many of them.

[Alexander]

6. This Scots-Irish voter will vote for the Democratic nominee, thanks.

Senator Webb would do well to remember that Obama's half-Irish.

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Actually Obama's not 'half-Irish', and Irish and Scots-Irish are not the same thing at all.

Scots-Irish = Presbyterians from the Scottish/English border country who went to Ireland under James I (the 'Plantation of Ulster', which was an effort to colonise Protestants in Catholic Ireland), and later under Cromwell and William III--'King Billy', who defeated the Catholic James II in 1689; the Ulster Scots connection to King Billy is where 'hillbilly' comes from; 'redneck', another term often used for Scots-Irish southerners, originates in the 17th century too: "The word redneck was first cited in 1638, when Scots -- riding the wave of the Protestant Reformation -- adopted the Presbyterian Church (in which each church is run by its own Presbyters, or elders) and rejected the Church of England and its episcopacy (rule by bishops). Scots signed a National Covenant, often using their own blood. Many wore red pieces of cloth around their neck to signify their position to the public. Hence, they were referred to as Rednecks."

The Ulster Scots who stayed behind are today's Northern Irish Unionists.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Scots-Irish (among many other things) Green socialist here

[Two Americas]

11. yes

"I wonder if the Scots-Irish are turning out heavily for Hillary."

Exactly right. That is the best factor for predicting and tracking her support. Rejection by that demographic of Obama is not based on race, as they rejected Gore and Kerry for the same reasons. Obama will do no better and no worse than they did with that demographic, which tells us that race is not the factor, or not the main one.

The Scots-Irish are a group that the Democrats have been steadily losing, and the Republicans have been very effective at wooing and bullshitting. We have made the Republican's job much easier by seeing that group as the enemy and constantly smearing and abusing them - based on cultural and fashion issues, not based on politics. The attacks on Clinton are 90% attacks on the ethics and traditions of the Scots-Irish and not political at all. We are probably seeing the final unraveling of the coalition that has been the power base for the Democratic party since FDR in the Obama campaign.

Of course people will post "I am Scots-Irish and don't fit the pattern" as though that proves anything. Whatever. Most activists have left whatever ethnicity they had, or deny it, and are atypical by choice and by definition.

[Barack_America]

12. Obama supporter of Irish descent here! Obama's mom was Irish too!

Lest we forget.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

13. OBAMA IS IRISH! ..............hurrah, he's got the nomination!

[Igel]

14. Map, to help visualize your speculation.

It's linked to from what's apparently a repub site, but I have no reason to doubt it's accuracy (making allowances for the occasional error). It's been batted around on a few conservative sites.

I'd like to find where it came from, if only to see the numbers behind the color gradations.

(On edit: The black outline delimits Appalachia, the referring site claims, per some US governmental definition of the region. /end edit)



I've heard the area referred to variously. Scotts-Irish (going for the ethnic aspect). "Jacksonian"(?). Appalachian (going for the sheer geography of it all). Don't know what to make of it; I'm of the view that there is no momentum unless there's a mass that's got a velocity. Politics is massless; and in what sense is either HRC or BO "moving"? In other words, the past doesn't necessarily predict the future.