By Tom Deignan

AT this point in history, an Irish Catholic in the U.S. Senate really shouldn’t raise many eyebrows. Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey Jr. was just elected over one-time conservative power broker Rick Santorum. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Casey is that he is not only Catholic but also a Democrat who is generally opposed to abortion.

So, it’s certainly not a big a deal to have a Scots Irishman elected to the Senate. After all, it was way back in the 1820s that the son of Irish Protestant immigrants, Andrew Jackson, was elected president, technically making him (and not John F. Kennedy) the first Irishman to make it to the White House,

Nevertheless, this past Friday, when the tight Virginia U.S. Senate race between Democrat Jim Webb and Republican Mark Warner was finally decided -– a full three days after Election Day –- it marked the conclusion of a fascinating Irish American story.

As far as U.S. politics, it was certainly a momentous occasion. The belated Webb victory meant that the Democrats officially seized control of the Senate, as well as the House.

But the Webb story is also of particular interest to Irish Americans. It was about this time last year that Webb –- a decorated Marine veteran who has a son fighting the war in Iraq –- was on the best-seller lists and magazine covers with his book Born Fighting: How the Scots Irish Shaped America.

The book is a personal as well as historical look at a group of Americans who are often either ignored or looked down upon. They are also rarely clumped together with Irish Catholic Americans.

According to Webb’s book, however (which he often made reference to while campaigning), the Scots Irish not only influenced America in profound ways, but they themselves were shaped by their journey from Ireland primarily to the rough, mountainous frontier regions of the American south.

What makes Webb’s book -– and election victory -– so interesting is that while he is proud of his roots and what his people have accomplished, he is also combative, even angry. Webb, in short, is not afraid to be confrontational. Then again, that’s pretty much what he says the Scots Irish are all about.

“(The Scots-Irish) people gave our country great things, including its most definitive culture,” he writes. “Its bloodlines have flowed in the veins of at least a dozen presidents, and in many of our greatest soldiers.

“It created and still perpetuates the most distinctly American form of music. It is imbued with a unique and unforgiving code of personal honor, less ritualized but every bit as powerful as the samurai code. Its legacy is broad, in many ways defining the attitudes and values of the military, or working class America, and even the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself.”

Despite this, however, Webb laments that the Scots Irish have often been ignored, or depicted in a negative light. It has to be added that while he might not state this explicitly, Webb is challenging Irish Americans to change their view of what it really means to be Irish American, and who exactly is included in that group.

Is it just Irish Catholics from New York, Chicago and Boston? For Webb, that would be a mistake.

According to Webb, the Scots Irish “story has been lost under the weight of more recent immigrations, revisionist historians, and common ignorance.”

He later writes, “The contributions of this culture are too great to be forgotten as America rushes forward into yet another redefinition of itself. And in a society obsessed with multicultural jealousies, those who cannot articulate their ethnic origins are doomed to a form of social and political isolation.

“My culture needs to rediscover itself, and in so doing to regain its power to shape the direction of America.”

Well, Webb has certainly done that with his Senate win. He was a critic of President Bush’s Iraq war policy and now, having given the Democrats a majority in the Senate, he can do something about it.