Megan McArdle is surely right that Jamie Kirchik’s prediction that Massachusetts may vote Republican this November seems, shall we say, implausible. Kirchik suggests that:
a Scots-Irish war veteran as the Republican nominee complicates predictions about whom Kennedy Country will support come November.
Well, up to a point Lord Copper. As Megan says, “Irish” America is largely catholic, whereas the descendants of the Scots-Irish, er, are not. More to the point, not many of them live in New England. The Scots-Irish constituency, to the extent is still exists, is found in Tennessee, southern Virginia and the Carolinas.
Still, in pointing out Kirchik’s mistake, Megan commits one of her own. It wasn’t Iain Paisley who popularised the oft-misquoted line that Northern Ireland be “protestant nation for a protestant people”, it was James Craig (himself of fine Scots-Irish stock), the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
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