“Please drink responsibly,” reads the St. Patrick’s Day tweet, which includes O’Rourke’s mug shot with a leprechaun hat on top. A scholar said the tweet raises questions about the Republican Party’s “use of stereotypes to wound potential opponents.”
By Felicia Sonmez Felicia Sonmez National reporter on The Washington Post's breaking political news team Email Bio Follow March 17 at 2:45 PM The Republican National Committee on Sunday sent out a tweet linking Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s Irish heritage to his 1998 drunken-driving arrest, in an attack that a scholar said raises questions about the party’s “use of stereotypes to wound potential opponents.
On this St. Paddy's Day, a special message from noted Irishman Robert Francis O'Rourke. pic.twitter.com/JRjMEXhZRY “There’s a long, tortured heritage, if you look at the way the Irish were depicted in the 19th century, in newspapers. There, you had depictions of them as rum-loving individuals who were creating havoc in America. To a certain extent, the message about O’Rourke draws on that questionable past,” said Schmuhl, who has studied portrayals of the Irish in America and is the author of the forthcoming book “The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from FDR to Trump.
Trump responded Thursday to O’Rourke’s announcement by poking fun at his body language. “I think he’s got a lot of hand movement,” the president told reporters at the White House. “I said, ‘Is he crazy, or is that just the way he acts?’ ”
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