As long as conservatives chalk up overwhelming black support of Democrats to racism, the rush to irrelevance by the Republicans will continue apace.

Anti-Irish racism in Victorian Britain and 19th century United States included the stereotyping of the Irish as alcoholics, and implications that they monopolised certain (usually low-paying) job markets. They were often called “white Negroes." Throughout Britain and the U.S., newspaper illustrations and hand drawings depicted a prehistoric "ape-like image" of Irish faces to bolster evolutionary racist claims that the Irish people were an "inferior race" as compared to Anglo-Saxons...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_…

I'm adopting "Ignoring the facts history" as a personal credo.

Yeah, there's a venerable tradition of casting the Irish as just that.

Was this an intentional reference to "The Commitments"?

Its pretty simple, your centre left is our centre right. faced with a. choice between centre right and extreme right it stands to reason only 4% votes for the extreme-right candidate. which if you extract the protest votes is about the percentage the extreme-right can rely on in average to get.
it would be intesting to see though what a for the US radical leftist (say for example a noam chomsky would poll, I bet he would score closer to Obama than to romney.

@6 Awwww damn it you got there first! :)

Also I think you'll find it goes beyond just Irish. Here the most conservative newspapers most staunch economic right wing politruck-pundit gladly said he'd vote for Obama. And we are as white as they come (or atleast according to Goering who claimed we where "the most pure of aryans" if that is something to be proud of otoh :) )

If that label applies to anyone in Europe today, I'm pretty sure it would be the Romani people.

Good Morning Charles,
Two other Sloggers (@6 & 8) got to "The Commitments" reference first regarding your last sentence. I recall reading that as well. I did see "The Commitments" years ago. Pretty good film. Great soundtrack which I possess.

A British poll showed 72% preferring Obama, and a French poll showed 90+% for Obama. Not just an Irish thing.

Please note that Ireland has a budget deficit of 13.4 pct of their GDP, mostly due to the tax giveaways to Microsoft.

Just saying.

Now go buy some Congo Bars from the East Congo Initiative cocoa co-operative, made in the USA under fair trade organic standards at Theo's Chocolate. They are on sale until Wedsnesday midnite online for only $7 instead of $10. That will do a lot more good.

I'm half English, having got US citizenship this year. I'm voting for Obama. My English mom totally can't figure out why anyone would vote for Romney (Mitt the Twit, over there). We have stupid people in Europe too, but for some reason even our stupid people can see through Romneylies.

"But it begs the question why Irish and Europeans in general see so little to like in the GOP candidates these days."

Arrgh! That's not what "begging the question" means! (Or used to mean.) When did the national media become completely sub-literate???

But to answer the question that was not begged, it's harder to get people to overlook an insane disregard for actual factual facts when they don't have a dog in the fight. At least 96% of everyone else disapproved of Serbian ethnic cleansing, but Serbs were more willing to believe that Croats eat Serb babies, or whatever the shit story was. Similarly, all to many Repugs can't parse the "you didn't build that" speech, but the Irish can.

@6 got there first on the completely stolen - or tribute - line, but fun fact - the guitarist in The Commitments is none other than Glen Hansard, who went on to make the beautiful little movie Once, now on Broadway as this year's Tony award winner for Best Musical.

I'm Canadian, and I, and most other Canadians I know, would vote for President Obama over Romney. And I don't think Canadians could accurately be described as the blacks of North America.