The first round of Democrat debates of the 2020 Presidential election have concluded, and the clear winner is… Donald J. Trump.

By a landslide.

That is, unless you are in favor of 70 percent income tax rates and open borders which can be crossed at will, or you can’t wait to give up your private healthcare insurance (and your choice of doctors, specialists, hospitals, clinics and so forth). Why, under the Democrats who couldn’t find any reason to disagree on health care you would have the same medical choices as any illegal immigrant.

How does that sound?

The leftward shift of the Democrat Party was on full display last week. The candidates were very clear that a future progressive-socialist dominated government would be radical, even “revolutionary.” But in truth there was little of real substance on either night as the candidates opted for emotional sound bites and virtue-signaling over serious policy choices.

Nevertheless, viewers could still clearly discern the impending attack on business and industry, and the mandatory wealth redistribution which have become essential elements in Democrat ideology. The fuel for this destruction of the country’s economy would of course be resentment over the class, generational, and racial divides which Democrats trot out for every occasion.

What on Earth has become of the Democrat Party? How could one of the two major American political parties so thoroughly disavow the founding principles and dearly-held political traditions of the most successful nation in human history? And where does this leave the many millions of Democrats who do not share the progressive-socialist ideology of their party?

Good questions, to be sure, which bring me to my point: Right here in Louisiana, the math is so obvious that even the staunchest left-wing progressive-socialist must admit that hundreds of thousands of Louisiana Democrats and independents consistently vote Republican.

By way of example, the leading vote-getter in Louisiana history, among all the elections ever held in the state, is none other than President Trump. He received exactly 1,178,638 votes on November 8, 2016. This total was several hundred thousand more votes than the entire number of registered Louisiana Republicans at the time, even if one were to assume that every Republican in the state voted (they didn’t – GOP turnout on Nov. 8, 2016 was 698,444, or 78 percent).

By way of further example, all but one of our statewide elected officials are Republican, all but one of our Congressional delegation are Republican, and nearly two-thirds of our state legislators are Republican. Yet Republicans only constitute 31 percent of all registered voters in Louisiana!

If the majority of Louisianans already vote Republican in most of our major elections, then why is it so important to actually be a registered Republican? Well, it just so happens that there are quite a number of reasons, which I’ll attempt to briefly sum up for this short article.

First, there has never been a starker difference between the two major parties. One party is veering sharply leftward, while the other has a consistent and coherent message which has held up quite well in recent decades. We don’t have a clue as to where the Democrats will end up ideologically, but they are already in a dangerous place: they no longer love or respect our country and the ideals on which it was founded. In truth, they don’t often say anything nice about America, and if they do you can be assured that a follow-on criticism will shortly be on the way. Anyone who remains a Democrat in today’s world implicitly supports their ideology (including Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has been completely quiet on those debates last week).

Second, the Republican Party stands for lower taxes, less government, and more individual freedom to live our lives as we choose. I mention these three fundamentals in the same paragraph because they are essentially one goal looked at from slightly different perspectives. Our Founders taught us to never trust government bureaucrats and history has proved them right – including in, and perhaps especially in, Louisiana.

Third, the Republican Party stands for a pro-market economy with minimum governmental intrusion. In a pro-market economy the people make the decisions on what to purchase and when, but the progressive/socialist elite thinks it knows how to run the economy better than we do. Similar social experiments in other countries throughout the 20th Century were failures, many tragically so. America’s market-driven economy created more wealth in that century than all socialist economies throughout the entire world combined, and today under President Trump more people from every walk of life are employed with better jobs than ever before.

Finally, only the Republican Party has the strength, the will, and the organization to successfully resist the tide of progressive-socialism which now infects the Democrat Party. And to be perfectly frank, minor parties and independents aren’t fighting in the culture war which now dominates our fractured political scene.

So if the last two nights of Democrat debates made you feel uncomfortable being a Democrat, or you want to be more politically relevant than being a member of a minor party or an independent allows, then what can you do? That’s easy – follow the more than 70,000 Louisiana Democrats who have left their old party since John Bel Edwards took office, and join the fastest growing political party in Louisiana, the LAGOP. We’ve gained over 100,000 members in less than four years!

On behalf of the LAGOP, I extend a warm and sincere invitation to our fellow Louisianans to join us:

DEMOCRATS, MINOR PARTY MEMBERS & INDEPENDENTS: Make the change to “REPUBLICAN” now. No, you don’t have to agree with the Republican Party platform on every single issue. After all, we have differences among ourselves, and a vibrant internal political debate and differing points of view are part of our political heritage, unlike the Democrats of today. But we love and respect our country and believe in the market economy which has made us the richest country in the world.

REPUBLICANS: Pass this message on to as many non-Republicans as you can, as soon as you can. It’s vitally important!

On to Victory in 2019!

Louis Gurvich, Chairman
Republican Party of Louisiana