Elbert Guillory: Democrats ‘Focus on the Past too Often’

Democratic leaders are looking backwards on race related issues, while GOP leaders are building a forward-looking economic policy, says Elbert Lee Guillory, a former GOP state Senator from Louisiana.

“I heard a prominent Democrat just a couple of days ago relating today’s problem [of police and crime] to slavery which happened more than 150 years ago,” Guillory told Breitbart News. Other Democrats are “relating it to problems of discrimination in the 1940s and 1950s, which ended 60 years ago … the problems of today must be addressed today.”

When asked about President Barack Obama’s comments on policing, Guillory sidestepped, saying “I don’t know, but his party focuses on the past too often.”

“The problems of today… of poor education, the lack of jobs, must be addressed today,” said Guillory, who produced a viral video when trying to win support for the GOP from African-Americans.

Africans-Americans are talking about the issue of police, crime and death of young African-American men in confrontations with police, he said. ”It is one of the most important issues — we’re talking about it around the table, around the water cooler, it is something that must be addressed,” he said.

The GOP needs to deal fairly and careful with the issue, but is also looking beyond race to economics, he told Breitbart.

“You will see over the next two, three months, you will see the Republican party address the problems of poverty, of criminal justice, of inequities … the Republican Party will address these issue [and] I’m part of these these political discussions,” he said.

“The hunger to succeed is what makes us [Americans] great – and too often Republican policies have destroyed that hunger, that initiative [but] we’re going to bring it back,” he said.

“In my community, unemployment has not been this high since the Great Depression,” he said.