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Ireland & the U.S. Presidential Campaign Trail 
Abdon M. Pallasch reports from the road.
New Year’s Eve: AMES, Iowa
U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Penn., the only Iraq War vet in Congress,
is giving the warm-up for Sen. Barack Obama at a New Year’s Eve
party at Iowa State University and explaining how he won in a Republican
district.
“Well, there’s another reason I won the race. . . .”
Murphy said.
“Because you’re Irish!” someone in the crowd shouted.
“Well,” he smiled, “I’m Irish, thank you. So
is Obama, O-bama.”
Murphy was actually going to say that the other reason he won is that
his wife is a Republican and he attracts cross-over votes as he believes
Obama can.
New Year’s Day: DUBUQUE, Iowa
John Walsh, an administrator at Loras University, a Catholic liberal
arts college where he also advises the Loras College Democrats, is introducing
Senator Obama at a rally two nights before the Iowa caucuses. It’s
about 11 p.m.
“I’m Irish-American and I’m getting sick and tired
of going to Ireland and having people say, ‘What in the hell were
you thinking of, voting for George W. Bush?’ They think we’re
all crazy,”
Walsh says to cheers from the crowd.
 Jan.
5: DERRY, New Hampshire
It’s here in this unwalled city that can’t really hold a
candle to the original in Northern Ireland that Republican presidential
candidate Mitt Romney got probably the toughest Ireland-
related comment of the campaign:
“I feel, Gov. Romney, that you’ve turned your back on God’s
creatures.”
Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform Vice-Chairman Ciarán Staunton
told Romney on January 5, reminding him that there are about 50,000 Irish
undocumented in the U.S.
“When you sit down tonight, Gov. Romney, will you do me a favor,
please remember that they are human.”
Romney brought out his stock line: “I love legal immigration, but
I want to end illegal immigration. . . . We simply cannot take all the
people in the world who want to come to America.”
Jan. 6: NASHUA, New Hampshire
Talking up her foreign policy experience, Senator Hillary Clinton said:
“I went [to Northern Ireland] more than my husband did. I was
working to help change the atmosphere among people because leaders alone
rarely make peace. They have to bring people along who believe peace is
in their
interests. I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in
the town hall there,
bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants.”
Clinton has used variations of that argument as she campaigns around
the country, noting she made six trips to Northern Ireland while her husband
made four.
A Boston Globe reporter challenged Clinton on whether she really did
bring together people from opposing sides of the conflict in Northern
Ireland or if she was giving speeches there. The Washington Post gave
Clinton a “Pinocchio” for “exaggeration.” But
prominent Northern Ireland activists rose to Clinton’s defense,
saying she did play an active role in her own right.
 Jan.
15: YPSILANTI, Michigan
John McCain is on stage wearing a forest green sweater vest –
Michigan State colors, not nearby University of Michigan colors.
“I just want to say my sweater has nothing to do with any allegiance
to any particular school or university. It’s because I’m Scotch
and Irish and Cindy is pure Irish and we have these superstitions.”
Perhaps sensing the drubbing he was to take from Romney in the Michigan
Republican primary election that day, McCain did not even stay in Michigan
to watch the returns. He flew from Ypsilanti to South Carolina where he
watched the Michigan returns at the Hibernian Society in South Carolina.
Feb. 14: MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin
Former President Bill Clinton talked up his wife to voters at the Italian
Community Center in the days before Wisconsin’s Democratic primary
election, saying,
“The leaders of Northern Ireland’s new government came to
Washington, D.C. the other day to thank the president for his support.
You know, we ended the longest conflict in modern European history. There
was only one other person they asked to see and that was Hillary. And
that was to thank her for the independent role she played in helping to
push that agreement.”
He said it again in Waukesha, Madison and LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
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