Rep. Pittman, the NC ideologue, invents Abe Lincoln the tyrant

State Rep. Larry Pittman’s latest comments have some Republicans running for the hills, viewers of his Facebook page challenging him, and doubtless his teachers wishing he’d paid more attention in history class.

We take Rep. Larry’s comments with a silo of salt and ask, “Larry — when are Moe and Curly showing up?”

The far-right preacher-by-trade from Concord is in his party’s most extreme tea party wing, and he hasn’t been much of a player in the Jones Street mainstream. Just recently, he joined other ultraconservative lawmakers in backing a bill to restore North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage (established by a state constitutional amendment) despite the fact that it’s been ruled unconstitutional.

Now in responding to critics of that move, Pittman has said in a Facebook post that President Abraham Lincoln was a “tyrant” similar to Adolf Hitler and “personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.” An interesting take on the Civil War, but hard to find in credible history books.

And Lincoln was a Republican.

One wonders if Pittman will next fix his political sights on Mother Teresa for being a bleeding heart who helped the poor or George Washington for being a revolutionary.

This story was originally published April 13, 2017 at 6:47 PM with the headline "Rep. Pittman, the NC ideologue, invents Abe Lincoln the tyrant."