Story at Fox Nation, via The Right Scoop:
MUST SEE: Black Louisiana Senator Explains Why He Left the Democratic Party and Became a RepublicanIf you don't want to watch the video, you can read the transcript at Real Clear Politics. Guillory makes the same arguments every other African-American Republican seems to make: Lincoln was a Republican; Southern racists in the Jim Crow era were Democrats; the "Democrat Party" keeps blacks on "the government plantation."
This has to be one of the most powerful 'ads' I've ever seen on what it means to be a Republican. But even more than that, Louisiana Senator Elbert Guillory explains why, as a black man, leaving the Democratic Party and becoming a Republican was absolutely the right choice.
TUNE IN TO 'HANNITY' TONIGHT AT 9 ET TO SEAN'S INTERVIEW WITH SEN. ELBERT GUILLORY!
Still -- he was a black Democrat! And now he's a black Republican! Wow! No wonder there's so much excitement at Human Events, Breitbart, and the Daily Caller ("Is Elbert Guillory the next conservative superstar?"). This is a big deal!
Or maybe not. Guillory is described in this 2002 legal document as a member of the St. Landry Parish Republican Executive Committee; we're told here that he "was registered Republican previously, switching to the Democratic Party in December 2006"; his affiliation with the GOP until 2006 is also mentioned in this article, as is the fact that he "served on the Republican State Central Committee" in Louisiana. What's more, that last article describes how Guillory worked with a right-wing group called Louisiana Family Forum Action on a redistricting plan for the state that eliminated three black-majority state Senate districts in New Orleans, replacing them with black-majority districts elsewhere in the state.
... the plan is generating no shortage of controversy from some of Guillory’s Senate colleagues, who see the plan as an affront to New Orleans' long-established districts and as a Trojan Horse for a hidden Republican agenda that will turn a majority of redrawn Senate districts more conservative....By the way, Oliver Willis notes that Guillory argued for teaching creationism in the public schools by recalling an experience he'd had with a witch doctor:
"What it comes down to," [state Senator J.P.] Morrel says, "is this is a purely political move by the Family Forum. The Family Forum is a super right wing conservative group, and if you look at what they do with African-American [state Senate] districts in Orleans Parish and what they do with Bill Jefferson/Joseph Cao's congressional seat, their goal is to dilute anyone who has a non-neoconservative agenda. That's their goal."
Evolution is not the only scientific theory that is controversial to Louisiana politicians. Apparently, modern medicine is also subject to debate. Louisiana state Sen. Elbert Guillory had a novel argument in defense of LSEA: It should not be repealed because he doesn’t want to "prematurely" declare that faith healing is "pseudo-science."In Guillory's own words:
During this year's state Senate hearing to repeal LSEA, Guillory explained that he wouldn't want to keep the "science" behind an experience he had with a witch doctor -- who "wore no shoes, was semi-clothed, used a lot of bones that he threw around" -- out of a public school science classroom.
Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man -- in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed. If I closed him off and just said, 'That’s not science; I'm not going to see this doctor,' I would have shut off a very good experience for myself.(Video here.)
Oh, and here's Guillory toeing the NRA line on guns (also via Oliver Willis):
I think we'll be fine without you, Senator.
I'm not sure why the GOP is hell-bent on finding an African-American standard-bearer who will scold every black person still registered as a Democrat, but the quest, clearly, is never-ending.
