The Wall Street Journal News Articles
Secret GOP Weapon: The Scots-Irish Vote
October 19, 2004
Also available on the Wall Street Journal Website
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 quasi-rural 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.
Why are the 30 million Scots-Irish, who may well be America's
strongest cultural force, so invisible to America's intellectual
elites? It is commonplace for commentators to lump together those
who are descended from British roots into the WASP culture typified
by New England Brahmins, or the Irish, who are overwhelmingly
Catholic. But it is political nonsense to consider the Scots-Irish
as part of either.
The Scots-Irish are derived from a mass migration from Northern
Ireland in the 1700s, when the Calvinist "Ulster Scots" decided
they'd had enough of fighting Anglican England's battles against
Irish Catholics. One group settled initially in New Hampshire,
spilling over into modern-day Vermont and Maine. The overwhelming
majority -- 95% -- migrated to the Appalachians in a series of
frontier communities that stretched from Pennsylvania to northern
Alabama and Georgia. They eventually became the dominant culture of
the South and much of the Midwest.
True American-style democracy had its origins in this culture. Its
values emanated from the Scottish Kirk, which had thrown out the
top-down hierarchy of the Catholic Church and replaced it with
governing councils made up of ordinary citizens. This mix of
fundamentalist religion and social populism grew from a people who
for 16 centuries had been tested through constant rebellions against
centralized authority. The Scots who headed into the feuds of
17th-century Ulster, and then into the backlands of the American
frontier, hardened further into a radicalism that proclaimed that no
man had a duty to obey a government if its edicts violated his moral
conscience.
Matched with this rebelliousness was a network of extended family
"clans," still evident among the Scots-Irish, built on an
egalitarianism that measured a person by their own code of honor,
courage, loyalty and audacious leadership. Noted Scottish professor
T.C. Smout said it best when he observed that these relationships
were "compounded both of egalitarian and patriarchal features, full
of respect for birth while being free from humility." They demanded
strong leaders, but would never tolerate one who considered himself
above his fellows. Andrew Jackson, the first president of
Scots-Irish descent, forever changed the style of American politics,
creating a movement that even today is characterized as Jacksonian
democracy.
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.
The Scots-Irish political culture is populist and inclusive, which
has caused other ethnic groups to gravitate toward it. Country music
is its cultural emblem. It is family-oriented. Its members are
values-based rather than economics-based: they often vote on
emotional issues rather than their pocket books. Because of their
heritage of "kinship," they're strangely unenvious of wealth, and
measure leaders by their personal strength and values rather than
economic position. They have a 2,000-year-old military tradition
based on genealogy, are the dominant culture of the military and the
Christian Right, and define the character of blue-collar America.
They are deeply patriotic, having consistently supported every war
America has fought, and intensely opposed to gun control -- an issue
that probably cost Mr. Gore both his home state of Tennessee and
traditionally Democratic West Virginia in 2000.
The GOP strategy is heavily directed toward keeping peace with this
culture, which every four years is seduced by the siren song of
guns, God, flag, opposition to abortion and success in war. By
contrast, over the past generation the Democrats have consistently
alienated this group, to their detriment.
The Democrats lost their affinity with the Scots-Irish during the
Civil Rights era, when -- because it was the dominant culture in the
South -- its "redneck" idiosyncrasies provided an easy target during
their shift toward minorities as the foundation of their national
electoral strategy. Their long-term problem in having done so is
twofold. First, it hampers their efforts to carry almost any
Southern state. And second, the Scots-Irish culture has strong
impact outside the South. This is especially strong in many
battleground states. It is no accident that many political observers
call the central region in Pennsylvania "Northern Alabama."
Scots-Irish traditions play heavily in New Hampshire -- the only New
England state that Mr. Bush carried in 2000. Large numbers of
Scots-Irish settled in the southern regions of Ohio (called
"Northern Kentucky"), Indiana and Illinois. They were among the
principal groups to settle Missouri and Colorado. They migrated
heavily to the industrial areas in Michigan, which is one reason
that George Wallace, ran so strongly in that state in 1968 and 1972.
But other than with those who identify with the Christian Right, it
would be wrong to think that the Republicans have their firm
loyalty. For every Lee Atwater or Karl Rove who understands the
Scots-Irish, there are others who privately disdain them. And
sometimes not so privately -- the most vicious ethnic slur of the
presidential campaign came from Charles Krauthammer, after Howard
Dean suggested that the Democrats needed to reach out to the "guys
with the Confederate flags on their pickup trucks." Mr. Krauthammer,
who has never complained about this ethnic group when it has marched
off to fight the wars he wishes upon us, wrote that Mr. Dean "wants
the white trash vote . . . that's clearly what he meant," and that
he was pandering to "rebel-yelling racist rednecks."
As with other ethnic groups, those inside the culture know how to
read such code words, and there may come a time when the right
Democratic strategist knows how to counter them in the manner that
Mr. Dean contemplated. John Edwards is at his visceral best when his
campaign rhetoric seems directed at doing that.
The decline in public education and the outsourcing of jobs has hit
this culture hard. Diversity programs designed to assist minorities
have had an unequal impact on white ethnic groups and particularly
this one, whose roots are in a poverty-stricken South. Their sons
and daughters serve in large numbers in a war whose validity is
increasingly coming into question. In fact, the greatest realignment
in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right
national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African
Americans to the same table, and so to redefine a formula that has
consciously set them apart for the past two centuries.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS