It’s been a week since state Representative Larry Pittman of Carrabus Countya Presbyterian minister who wants abortion providers publicly hanged and has sponsored legislation to allow North Carolina to secedegot into a Facebook spat over his effort to prohibit same-sex marriage despite what the Supreme Court says and, after some back-and-forth over states’ rights, called President Lincoln “the same sort [of] tyrant” as Adolf Hitler.
In that time, several Republicans have sprinted to put distance between themselves and Lost Cause Larry. Representative Jason Saine of Lincolnton, for instance, told The News & Observer that Pittman’s comments were “incredibly offensive” and that “the folks that are going to go to the polls in 2018 will certainly remember this.” Representative Bill Brawley of Mecklenburg posted a dope Twitter meme that said “I STAND W/ ABE!” and had the hashtag “#NCFORLINCOLN.” And so on.
But the N.C. Republican Party has been completely mum. Same goes for House Speaker Tim Moore. This, even though the state GOP hosts Lincoln Day dinners and declares itself the Party of Lincolnwhich, in Pittman’s view, is apparently akin to being the Party of Hitler.
It’s beyond obvious to point out that, had a Democrat made such an incendiary comparison, the NCGOP outrage machine would have been immediately cranked to eleven, the condemnations coming fast and furious. And rightly so. But Pittman, it seems, gets a pass.
In any event, perhaps the strongest Republican repudiation of Pittman came from Brent Woodcox, the General Assembly’s redistricting attorney, who tweeted this: “There is no other Republican Party than the party of Lincoln. If you don’t like it, leave it. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
It’s a shame that statement didn’t come from NCGOP executive director Dallas Woodhouse. Maybe he didn’t want to antagonize the Confederate Flag brigade.
This article appeared in print with the headline “+LOST CAUSE LARRY.”
