There’s an opening for a new “Young Gun,” the not-so-very-young pols whom the Republican National Congressional Committee is grooming to be the “future leaders of America.” The Young Guns program lost a promising member last week when it was disclosed that Rich Iott, the GOPer running against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, likes to dress up like a Nazi as part of his membership in the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Division, a group of Ohio World War II reenactors with a difference:

According to their website, the Wikings strive to “salute” the “idealists” from occupied northern Europe who saw the Third Reich as “the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life” and signed up to fight for the Wermacht and “gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.

While the RNCC doesn’t really seem to care so much about just how right their right wingers are (the righter the better seems to be the case), they do shy away from a such a glaringly public association with the actual prototypes of racist murderers, hence the opening. And prominent on their Young Guns Webpages, as a “contender” for Young Gun status, is none other than Missouri’s own Ed Martin, Russ Carnahan’s Tea Party opponent for the 3rd district House seat.

So what would Martin’s selection as a Young Gunner mean – besides getting lots of money? Simply that the RNCC thinks he has a realistic chance of winning his race and getting into congress where he could support the Young Guns agenda.

And what is that agenda? Just consider that  Young Guns is the title of a book by Reps. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy, the avant garde of retrograde GOPism. They like to think of themselves as not belonging to “your grandfather’s Republican party.” And they’re right. My grandfather’s Republican party was the party of moderate Nelson Rockefeller – they are more like my great, great grandfather’s Republican party, the one owned by John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt during the Gilded Age. Not a really nice time for the working man or the tiny middle class of the period as I recollect.

This Americans United video may be satirical, but it’s on the money in its depiction of the exemplary young guns and their targets:

Apart from the original young guns spurious intellectual aspirations, Ed Martin should fit right in. He has, after all, already tweeted his allegiance to Ryan’s “Road Map for America’s Future” which aims to slash entitlement programs as part of dismantling the entire government, although, sly boots that he is, he is careful to run for cover when directly confronted with his support for the agenda that dare not say its name. As SMP blogger Hotflash puts it:

True, Ed Martin is not on record ever having uttered the words, “I support privatization of Social Security,” but unless he didn’t know even the most basic information about the Ryan plan, he implicitly stood in favor of privatization.

Only lately has Martin started acting as if he hadn’t noticed that little privatization thingie in the Ryan plan. But he is, at least, very sure where he stands now–in the only safe spot for a candidate with a prayer of getting elected.

Of course, it is where they stand after they get elected that defines members of the party of the Big Lie.