Florida Republican Rep. Allen West said on Wednesday night’s “The O’Reilly Factor” that he is “the modern-day Harriet Tubman” for his commitment to leading blacks away from the Democratic Party.
The freshman congressman, discussed as a possible candidate for Senate in 2012, responded to the Congressional Black Caucus’ outrage over President Obama avoiding urban settings on a bus tour.
West told substitute host Laura Ingraham, “you have this 21st century plantation that has been out there, when the democrat party has forever taken the black vote for granted.”
Black Democrats are merely plantation overseers, West said.
“You have established certain black leaders who are nothing more than the overseers of that plantation, and now the people on that plantation are upset, because they have been disregarded, disrespected and their concerns are not cared about,” West said.
“So I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman,” West declared, “to lead people on the underground railroad away from that plantation and to a sense of sensibility.”
Ingraham asked if California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters was a “plantation boss.”
“Absolutely,” West responded. “What you end up having, I’m going to be brutally honest, is that white liberals have turned over to certain leaders, or ‘perceived leaders’ of the black community — like a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee — and said, ‘pacify and keep the black community firmly behind us, regardless of the failures of our social welfare policies.'”
A spokesman for Waters told The Daily Caller that the congresswoman will likely ignore West’s comments.