Thanks to a gang of (presumably) drunken thugs in a Belfast bar, the 2nd-term Bush administration no longer has a reason to defer to the huge Irish-American vote on Northern Ireland. So Sinn Féin’s Capitol Hill access privileges have been revoked and the IRA faces an existential threat of unimagined proportions. What must it feel like for the sainted Adams and McGuinness – after a decade of the toughest internal politics and the most delicate public realignment in history – to have been so profoundly eclipsed by the McCartney ingenues? From Presidential darling to historic irrelevance in about three weeks.
In which I try, after 25 years of blogging, to drop my ironic stance a bit.
This will only be a temporary setback for Sinn Fein. There was an election in Ireland last week and Sinn Fein actually increased their share of the vote from the last election.
Here are some recent news stories from Ireland that you might find interesting:
Time to Stop Demonising Sinn Fein, Irish News
Killing used as political football, Daily Ireland
Sisters here, but who’s paying? Irish Echo
Unionists ‘hypocrites’ over McCartney death: Victim’s father, Online.ie
Precedent aplenty of armies shooting people, Daily Ireland
Short shrift for the Strand, Sunday Business Post
Murder used as a political football, Daily Ireland
On last nights news it was said that Bush was saying that ‘no way’ was Adams persona non grata, and that he was ‘nowhere near the Arafat situation’. I think the Bush White House thoght they would dump Adams for good, but have got cold feet for whatever reason. I guess this will blow over. That said, it would be such brillian Sinn Fein politics now to engineer the disbanding of the IRA. They’d probably end up running all Ireland in five years.