In response to a social media beating over his introduction HB870, which seeks to override the Supreme Court and nullify same sex marriage in North Carolina, state Rep Larry Pittman (R, Bigotville) dropped pretense and revealed what a lot of white southern Republicans really think about Lincoln. Namely, that he was an evil tyrant… like Hitler.
Pittman said his bill "would be upholding the law of this State in spite of the opinion of a federal court that had no business interfering" in the state's 2012 constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
"Memo: the Civil War is over. The Fed won. Get over it," Dave Flomberg commented on the page.
Pittman then responded, "And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort if [sic] tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional."
I grew up in North Carolina and as ridiculously offensive as Pittman’s statement is, it is not as fringe as some would have you believe. The GOP in the South is no more “the party of Lincoln” than Trump is competent.
Pittman and those like him are motivated by bigotry, racism and hate. It is just an is. And it is why Trump won their votes. It doesn’t matter if they are rich or struggling, hopey changey economic messages of everyone doing better aren’t what make them tick. In fact, quite the opposite. The last thing they want is for anyone not like them to do well.
You can’t win these people. You have to defeat them. It is just an is.