- The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Louisiana State Sen. Elbert Guillory said in a video message delivered to constituents — and particularly, his fellow black voters — that he’s finally come to his senses and realized the Democratic Party disguises an all-consuming quest for control as concern and aid for minorities.

The senator announced his defection from the Democratic Party for the Republican Party a few weeks ago. But just recently, he released a video explaining his reasons, titled “Why I Am a Republican.”

In short, he says Democrats routinely push a social justice and welfare aid agenda to control blacks — rather than help them move from poverty, The Blaze reported.

Some of his video statements: “You see, in recent history, the Democratic party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow, it has been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement, with one simple creed — that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.”

Mr. Guillory reminded, the Blaze reported, that Frederick Douglass referred to the GOP as “the party of freedom and progress,” that former Republican President Abraham Lincoln was the one to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, and this it was the Republican Party that created the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments — outlawing slavery, granting citizenship to descendants of slaves and abolishing race-based voting prohibitions.

“The Democrats, on the other hand, were the party of Jim Crow,” he said. “It was the Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners.

He then said that welfare and food stamps were never aimed at helping the poor, but rather controlling them. The proof? Blacks and minorities are still “as poor as they’ve ever been,” he said.

“At the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans,” Mr. Guillory said, in the video. “But the left is only concerned with one thing: control. And they disguise this control as charity.”

The real leader of destiny — including the destinies of poor and minorities — is not government, but God, Mr. Guillory said.

He said, in the video: “These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party. My brothers and sisters of the American community, please join me in abandoning the government plantation and the party of disappointment — so that we may all echo of one Republican leader who famously said, ’Free at last, free at last, Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’ “

• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.

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