The continuing Norris saga

So as expected, TDs who had previously committed to supporting David Norris have now started to withdraw support. Finian McGrath led the charge, quickly followed by John Halligan and Thomas Pringle. It really does appear as if the campaign is now in its final days or even hours. Since my last blog post on Saturday night a few more issues have come up that I want to address.

One comment suggested that I was holding Norris to a higher standard than any of the other candidates. To quote Brian Lenihan, I don't accept that at all. The president is the leading citizen of the country and has to be held to a higher standard. I mentioned Bobby Molloy's and Kathleen Lynch's stupid interventions previously. Add to that list Charlie Flanagan, Tony Kileen and even Trevor Sargent who did equally stupid things. But none of them are running for President. If Mary Davis, Sean Gallagher or MDH made equally ill-advised submissions to courts then I'd be taking them to task also.

And then there's Gay Mitchell. He is another person who made a submission to a court. While I haven't seen the original document, I gather that it was to a court in Florida asking for a death sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment for a man convicted of a double murder in pursuit of his anti-abortion agenda. This was done while Mitchell was Fine Gael Foreign Affairs spokesman. This again is interference in the judicial affairs of a foreign state and is again unacceptable unless it is FG policy to plea for clemency in every capital case. But I doubt it is. This case played to Mitchell's religious right, Iona Institute buddies and so the letter was sent.

There is still the ongoing Zionist agenda stuff doing the rounds too. Occam's razor kicks in at some point. The case was over ten years ago, reported on in newspapers and Norris has even spoken about it on radio interviews. It doesn't take the Illuminati to hide his submission for a decade and a half before releasing it at the right moment. It was out there waiting to be found but nobody went looking. Blame lazy journalism, blame lack of interest, but don't channel Jim Corr and invent a worldwide conspiracy against Norris.

Finally, if Norris withdraws, that puts 15 nominations back in play. Will there be another candidate put forward by that group? Or by the ULA/SF? Except that I think his health might get in the way I'd make an approach to Christy Moore. He's a strong lefty, republican but in a clean way and extremely popular across the country. That would certainly put the cat amongst the political pigeons.

PS - thanks to all for reading. Previous blog post was my 2nd most read post in almost two years of this carry on.