The mutation of Irish-American populism

It's getting more difficult to ignore the pronounced rightward drift of Irish-American public figures and commentary. One could point to the pro-Hitler rantings of Father Coughlin in the 1930s as an indication that some latent reactionary tendencies have been there for a while -- surely though, Coughlin was a bizarre exception to the potent combination of hawkish liberal populism that Irish-American politics used to represent.

But even if reaction was present before, it's now a phenomenon of much broader scale and scope. Some of it is fairly benign and is presumably what people have in mind when they use the expression "Reagan Democrats." However, a quick tour of US TV screens and newspapers on any day over the last few years would range from the ranting and thuggery of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, to the inexplicably embittered vitriol of Michael Kelly (RIP) against Bill Clinton and Al Gore, to the shallow superficiality of Maureen Dowd aimed at the same two men. And then there's the pure unadulterated Irish-American spin of Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie.

We were prompted to actually post about this by the following observation from Andrew Sullivan:

Ah, yes. Modern populist conservatism [Ann Coulter]. O'Reilly is another case. When I listen to him blather on, I'm reminded of a drunk Irish uncle at Christmas, who can't shut up and cannot be argued with. Switch him off.

It's always tough to get a read on how Sullivan feels about his Irish-Catholic identity; sometimes it appears as useful evidence of quasi-victimhood, when Dubya is perceived as playing too much to the evangenical gallery, sometimes it's an almost sub-conscious pride in an Irish Tory identity, but in this case it's serving as the equivalent of the bleacher seats for the more gauche members of the political movement of which Sullivan is a part. It's like those posh Oirish types who announce that they are holidaying in the "Balearic Islands" to separate themselves from the Irish plebs also on their way to Majorca, emphasis on the 'j.'

We still don't have a good theory for why Irish-American punditry has evolved the way it has. But looking at present day politics in the Irish Republic might lessen some of the mystery given the current government's combination of cronyism disguised as populism and outright incompetence. If it's really innate, that's bad news, because it means we're stuck with the Bills and Seans, the Maureens and the Eds, for quite a while.