The populist fury aimed at President Obama and his fellow Democrats may have roots much deeper than health care. In fact, it may be that it can be traced back to the emigration of the Scots-Irish, the first white group to settle interior America.They've been called rednecks, hillbillies and crackers. In the modern parlance of political correctness, they've been referred to as the Bubba vote. They live in Sarah Palin's "real America," and they make up the majority of Reagan Democrats. They count as distant relatives at least twelve U.S. presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton and even to Barack Obama, yet the Scots-Irish remain largely ignored as an ethnic group in America.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
The Scots-Irish
An excellent analysis of the Scots-Irish vote by Cameron Joseph at The Atlantic:
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2 comments:
It strikes me that talking about the Scots-Irish rather than Southern whites adds no explanatory value. Obama's vote percentages for Southern whites were consistent from state-to-state. He did worse in Appalachia because there were less blacks in those areas to counteract the poor numbers that he received from Southern whites overall.
For an even more in depth view of the Scots-Irish, look into Sen. Webb's book, "Born Fighting - How the Scots-Irish Shaped America".
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916883
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