Trump attended 1995 Sinn Fein fundraiser

[RogueBeaver]

With Gerry Adams. Somehow I'm not surprised.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

More anti-Catholic bigotry. This forum never ceases to amaze me.

[TJ in Oregon]

More anti-Catholic bigotry. This forum never ceases to amaze me.

The Catholic Church once denounced Sinn Fein. I suppose the Bishops are anti-Catholic bigots too.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Peter King openly supported IRA and he is still in perfect standing among Republicans.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

More anti-Catholic bigotry. This forum never ceases to amaze me.

The Catholic Church once denounced Sinn Fein. I suppose the Bishops are anti-Catholic bigots too.

You never let me have fun with these people, do you!

You think I support those pro-choicers?

[Asian Nazi]

FF move by The Donald

[tpfkaw]

Please GOP establishment, please attack him on this. It would be nice to see him get 50% in New Hampshire.

[Lief 🗽]

RATINGS CHANGE

NH PRIMARY
Lean Trump >>>> Safe Trump

MA PRIMARY
Tossup >>>> Safe Trump

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Peter King openly supported IRA and he is still in perfect standing among Republicans.

White terrorists are just fine with Republicans (and vice-versa). It's so obvious, it shouldn't even need to be said.

[Suburbia]

Peter King openly supported IRA and he is still in perfect standing among Republicans.

White terrorists are just fine with Republicans (and vice-versa). It's so obvious, it shouldn't even need to be said.

Same with the Black Panthers and some Democrats. What else is new.

[TJ in Oregon]

More anti-Catholic bigotry. This forum never ceases to amaze me.

The Catholic Church once denounced Sinn Fein. I suppose the Bishops are anti-Catholic bigots too.

You never let me have fun with these people, do you!

You think I support those pro-choicers?

At least in Northern Ireland in the 90s, Sinn Fein was not pro-choice (they still aren't in the North). I can't unironically call them pro-life (lol) but abortion wasn't the problem

Heh sorry to ruin the fun. I've been on something of an anti-Trump rage the last few days. I tend to have this crazy expectation that people will say what they mean and mean what they say. This place and this race have not been good to me.

[Mr. Morden]

Peter King openly supported IRA and he is still in perfect standing among Republicans.

White terrorists are just fine with Republicans (and vice-versa). It's so obvious, it shouldn't even need to be said.

Christian white terrorists, that is.  The Tsarnaev brothers looked pretty white to me, but I don't think they qualify as "good terrorists". 

[tpfkaw]

Peter King openly supported IRA and he is still in perfect standing among Republicans.

White terrorists are just fine with Republicans (and vice-versa). It's so obvious, it shouldn't even need to be said.

Christian white terrorists, that is.  The Tsarnaev brothers looked pretty white to me, but I don't think they qualify as "good terrorists".  

Pretty sure the IRA are atheists (albeit Catholic atheists, as the clichéd joke goes).

Anyway, couple questions for the lefty denunciators ITT: 1. Whom would you like to win the Irish election next year? 2. What's your opinion of Teddy Kennedy and of Jeremy Corbyn?

[H. Ross Peron]

This probably puts Massachusetts and New York in play in the general.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Peter King openly supported IRA and he is still in perfect standing among Republicans.

White terrorists are just fine with Republicans (and vice-versa). It's so obvious, it shouldn't even need to be said.

Christian white terrorists, that is.  The Tsarnaev brothers looked pretty white to me, but I don't think they qualify as "good terrorists".  

Pretty sure the IRA are atheists (albeit Catholic atheists, as the clichéd joke goes).

Anyway, couple questions for the lefty denunciators ITT: 1. Whom would you like to win the Irish election next year? 2. What's your opinion of Teddy Kennedy and of Jeremy Corbyn?

1) nobody (normal)
2) bastard
3) naive

[Landslide Lyndon]

Peter King openly supported IRA and he is still in perfect standing among Republicans.

White terrorists are just fine with Republicans (and vice-versa). It's so obvious, it shouldn't even need to be said.

Same with the Black Panthers and some Democrats. What else is new.

Remind me please, how many people were killed by Black Panthers terrorist attacks?

[Torie]

Some folks think NH Pubs are in love with Sinn Fein?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

A current major nominee for office meets a radical militant Republican.

[tpfkaw]

Some folks think NH Pubs are in love with Sinn Fein?

Apparently WASP moderates now love Catholics and the IRA.

New Hampshire has been plurality Catholic since the 70s or so; it has the third-largest white Catholic share of the state population in the country, behind Massachusetts and Rhode Island. More to the point it has the second largest Irish-American share of the state population (20.5) in the country, just barely behind Massachusetts (21.2). And if you include all the "1/8th Irish" people that Europeans love to complain about, you're probably up to 40% or so.

Anyway, during the Troubles many Irish-Americans and "1/8th Irish" types enjoyed the opportunity to simultaneously indulge in nationalism and make themselves feel like special snowflakes, so they loudly agitated for the Republican side. Much like Jewish Americans and Israel, albeit to a lesser degree.

OTOH, nobody really strongly identified with the Ulster Protestants, so it was one of those issues where the intensity was all on one side. From the 70s to the 90s politicians couldn't be elected in most of the Northeast unless they were strongly pro-Republican (often to the point of being pro-Sinn Féin or even pro-IRA, like Peter King was).

Jimmy Carter, for example, marched in the 1976 NYC St. Patrick's Day parade wearing an "England Get Out of Ireland" pin and banned the sale of weapons to the Royal Ulster Constabulary as President. Bill Clinton lifted the US travel ban on Gerry Adams (hence this fundraiser) and forced John Major and the Unionists to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement by threatening to make the MacBride Principles US law.

Or you could look at the many still-prominent cosponsors of Teddy Kennedy's 1983 United Ireland resolution (Senate, House).

Anyway, this won't hurt Trump for the same reason Bernie Sanders having honeymooned in the Soviet Union doesn't hurt him in the Democratic primary. Basically I'd estimate 15% of Democrats (who've heard of that factoid) are outraged by that kind of neoliberal McCarthyist smear, 5% find that an unsettling anecdote, 40% think it's a somewhat comical blast from the past to bring that up, and 40% aren't totally clear on what the Soviet Union even was.

I'd expect about the same breakdown with Trump and Sinn Féin, except that in certain states such as New Hampshire the attack would actually backfire as opposed to just not having any impact.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Do Ulster Scots derived Americans have any affinity for the unionists? Or is that connection a bit too far in the past?

[Asian Nazi]

Do Ulster Scots derived Americans have any affinity for the unionists? Or is that connection a bit too far in the past?

Yeah way too far they almost all identify as having "American" heritage on census forms.  And honestly I can't blame them since most of their ancestors have probably been here since the 1700's.

[tpfkaw]

Do Ulster Scots derived Americans have any affinity for the unionists? Or is that connection a bit too far in the past?

Too far in the past; their nationalistic remembrances have historically been pretty much confined to American nationalism and Civil War commemoration (whether to side with the Union or the Confederacy deeply divided heavily Scots-Irish states, counties and families, and, at least in the past, Scots-Irish Americans were extremely proud of whichever side their ancestors fought on, oftentimes both). It's getting to the point where the Civil War connection is too far in the past (hence the Confederate flag coming down in SC), and the vast majority of Scots-Irish immigrants came here before the Civil War, so at this point I'm quite sure most wouldn't be able to find Ulster on a map.

Also, unlike in NI and rUK, relations between Irish-Americans and Scots-Irish Americans have usually been pretty friendly (with the big exception that the Scots-Irish were the biggest supporters of the Second Klan and other 20th-century anti-Catholic groups). They were both 19th-century immigrant minority groups who were looked down upon by the WASP majority, and prior to the 2000 realignment both formed the Democrats' base in their respective areas. The other thing is the significant geographic separation between the two groups; Irish Catholics are concentrated in the urban Northeast, the Scots-Irish in rural Appalachia.

Right, but wouldn't the Republicans in the area be less Catholic than average, even now? Not saying there wouldn't be many Catholic Republicans.

In the past but probably not now; southern/eastern NH, the most Irish and Catholic part of the state, is the Republican base region, while northern/western NH, WASP and French-Canadian (the most WASPy of Catholic groups) is the Democrats' base.

This is slightly misleading because WASPs are more Republican than Catholics everywhere in the state, but southeastern Catholics are more Republican than northwestern WASPs, so it should average out so that the white Catholic portions of the Republican and Democratic primary electorates are about equal. Maybe even somewhat greater in the Republican primary; it depends on the turnout of registered independents (disproportionately Catholic) in both primaries.