Casey scrapes bottom of the barrel being bottom in race to Áras

HADN’T anticipated taking much comfort from this tepid shower of a presidential campaign but that’s what has happened. Peter Casey is the man responsible for it, writes Alison O’Connor. 

The Sideshow Bob of the campaign went this week from being a bit of a hoot to a nasty bigot when he decided to play the racism card and have a go at the Traveller community. It was straight from the discrimination playbook as he hit all the populist buttons with his talk of “beautifully kitted out kitchens”, “solar panels”, “free education”, “don’t pay tax” and the Traveller status as an ethnic minority being “a load of nonsense”. They’re not even Romany, he threw in for good measure.

Ah Peter, the wild card (stressing the wild) element you brought to the campaign with your digs about the grooming of the presidential dogs and Lear jets brightened up a dull few weeks, causing many of us to, possibly immaturely, to have a bit of a guilty giggle. It all seemed relatively harmless. But for all your craic and craicedness clearly your pride was suffering as you looked at the tiny number of people who said they were going to vote for you this day next week; The Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll put that number at 2% of people. Desperate times, thought Peter, call for desperate measures.