Meet the New Bachmanns

The congressional class of 2014 will include future leaders. There will be Democrats and Republicans first elected this year who will become national figures and spend decades distinguishing themselves in public service.

There also will be a number of bomb-throwing wacky figures elected this year as well – the kind of politicians who are likely to only distinguish themselves for gaffes and off color comments. These are four of them:

GLENN GROTHMAN

The controversial Republican Glenn Grothman won a gerrymandered Wisconsin district handily Tuesday. Grothman, who is succeeding retiring moderate Tom Petri is on the record as opposing Martin Luther King Day and supporting a seven-day work week.

Grothman has also attacked John Kerry for offending God by condemning Uganda’s anti gay law, and recalled his high school years as a time when “homosexuality was not on anybody’s radar and that’s a good thing.” Bloomberg’s Dave Weigel has already dubbed him as the next Republican congressman “more likely to end up being mocked by Jon Stewart as they are to pass a bill.”

JODY HICE

Republican Jody Hice romped home in a safe rural Georgia congressional district last night. The congressman-elect is on the record saying that Islam is not a religion that deserves the protection of the First Amendment. He also has warned that Satan is infiltrating society and that there is a gay blueprint to dominate America via sodomizing “your sons.”

Yet Hice does have some surprisingly progressive views, such as his belief that women should be allowed to run for office. This is provided that they get permission from their husbands first.

MARK WALKER

Mark Walker easily won his North Carolina House, which is district centered around Greensboro, after triumphing in a highly-competitive primary to succeed longtime GOP Rep. Howard Coble earlier this year. Walker, a pastor making his first run for elected office, has already made a very aggressive foreign policy statement, saying that he wouldn’t have any qualms about going to war against Mexico in effort to secure the southern border.

He expounded on his philosophy of securing the Mexican border by saying “if you have foreigners who were sneaking in with drug cartels to me that is a national threat and if we’ve got to go laser or blitz somebody with a couple of fighter jets for a little while to make our point, I don’t have a problem with that either.”

KEN BUCK

Colorado Republican Ken Buck first came to fame in 2010 as the Tea Party nominee for Senate in the Rocky Mountain State, whose gaffes may have cost the GOP a Senate seat. It was revealed that when he was serving as a county attorney that Buck refused to prosecute a rape case where even the suspect admitted he was guilty, simply because Buck thought the victim was actually suffering “buyer’s remorse.” He also compared homosexuality to alcoholism. “I think that birth has an influence over it,” Buck said when asked about homosexuality in a Meet the Press debate, “like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically, you have a choice.

Buck was ready to run for Senate again in 2014 before Republicans convinced Cory Gardner, a popular congressman, to run against him in a primary. Buck then quickly bowed out and ran for Gardner’s safe Republican seat in Congress, which he won handily on Tuesday.

These candidates are obviously not representative of all newly elected congressmen, let alone all newly elected Republicans. Instead, they represent a basic truth that federal politicians, like kids, say the darnedest things.