Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young has passed away (Florida Republican)

Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young, Florida's longest-serving member of Congress has passed away.

On Thursday, the family of the 82-year-old lawmaker said that he was gravely ill.

"U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young (FL-13) passed away this evening at The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the company of his family. The cause of death was complications related to a chronic injury. Information on services will be forthcoming."

Young was influential on military spending during his 43 years in Washington, and in October announced his decision to retire.

In recent years, Young had become increasingly frail and relied on a wheelchair. He was quoted by the Tampa Bay Times as saying that his decision was based on both his health and a desire to spend more time with his family.

Young had been seeking treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., due to back problems that stemmed from a 1970 small-plane crash.

After Young made his announcement to retire, praise of his service from his fellow Florida politicians emerged.

"Congressman Bill Young is an American patriot," tweeted former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush. "We appreciate his service!"

Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio praised Young for his support for the military. "No one has fought harder for the servicemen and women in this country and for returning veterans than Bill and his wife, Beverly," wrote Rubio in a news release.

Said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat: "He was always someone who approached solutions in a bipartisan way. He will be missed."

Young was born in Harmarville, Pa., and later moved to Indian Shores, Fla., a small Gulf Coast community in Pinellas County.

He served in the Army National Guard from 1948 to 1957, then became an aide to U.S. Rep. William Cramer from 1957 to 1960. From 1961 to 1971, he served in the Florida Senate.

He was first elected to the U.S. House in 1970. Young and his wife, Beverly, have three children. His son, Bill Young II, has expressed interest in the past in running for office.

The congressman was a longtime member of the House Appropriations Committee, where he focused on military spending. He and his wife frequently visited ailing service members at hospitals in the Washington area.

As one of the strongest defense hawks in Congress, Young made headlines in 2012 when he said the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.

Young told The Associated Press at the time that "we're killing kids who don't need to die," and reflected the growing weariness with a conflict that had dragged on for more than a decade.

Young brought hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks back to the Tampa Bay area, and built up a defense contracting industry in the region, creating jobs and stirring the economy.

Well, I don’t much care for the Heritage ratings—Chris Gibson in the 20s? In any event, the Heritage Foundation isn’t the only group that scores congressional votes. Personally, I don’t think that we should limit ourselves to a single group, and what I prefer to do is find the average conservative rating from six ideological entities whose scores are listed in Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics. I take scores from three liberal groups, Americans for Democratic Action, the pro-labor AFSCME and the League of Conservation Voters (turning them into conservative scores by subtracting them from 100), and from three conservative groups, the American Conservative Union, the Club for Growth and the Family Research Council, add them all up, and divide by 600. Here are the conservative scores for 2011-12 for those eight Representatives:

Walden: 82.17%

Crawford: 86.33%

Lucas: 85.25%

Palazzo: 90.17%

Roby: 84.92%

Bucshon: 89.67%

Ellmers: 88.08%

Schock: 82.75%

So all but Walden and Schock (the two I had identified as slightly RINOish) scored between 85-90%, and even those two less conservative congressmen scired between 82-83%. I already stated that I would like Walden to run for the Senate (where he would provide our best chance of winning and would be a vast improvement over the RAT incumbent) and leave his House seat open for a solidly conservative successor; similarly, I would like for Schock to take on Dick Durbin and let someone more conservative represent his very Republican district in the House. But I would not waste time and money running primary opponents against those two fairly conservative Republicans—much less against the other six, more conservative, Republicans—that could be used to try to defeat Democrats in winnable districts or to take out Republicans who truly deserve getting voted out (such as the adamantly pro-abortion Richard Hanna in NY-22 and Charlie Dent in PA-15, the way-too-moderate-for-Idaho Mike Simpson, Paulistinians Thomas Massie (KY-04), Justin Anash (MI-03) and Kerry Bentivolio (MI-11), and scumbag doctor Scott DesJarlais (TN-04).

I often will defer to Heritage because of DeMint’s involvement, and the user-friendliness of the website. But these specific congressmen I took from the Club for Growth website, ‘Primary my Congressman’. This site takes requests and measures who district voters are most unhappy with.

http://www.primarymycongressman.com/

It lists already primaried Mike Simpson and Adam Kinzinger alongside.

I fully support the removal of Charlie Dent. He’s a disaster. Another one of Peter King’s acolytes. He’d make my lust of top 10 targets actually.

Yes, Hanna is earth-shatteringly awful in NY, but it is NY. How conservative is his district?
DesJarlais, as much as I hate him, is likely to cruise to a victory. His only real challengers for 2014 dropped out of the race to run for Lamar!’s senate seat.

As for the Paulistinians, I think they would be a nightmare to remove, and cost us a lot of money, when they did stand with us on Obamacare and other things. I’m sure many longed for us to primary Ron Paul back when he was still in congress, but he was unassailable. When a district goes full libertarian, it’s hard to turn it back.

I do not want Schock to run against Durbin. Conservatives do not like this guy for good reason. He is yet another Peter King ball-washer. He just has to go.
The outsider businessman running against Durbin might stand a better chance than some republican who votes with Bohner and co. Schock just needs to get lost, and take Petey with him.

I will say this about Palazzo. I just looked at the full scorecard for Mississippi. He’s the best they have. Palazzo actually does better than all the other congressmen and both senators. Benn Harper is particularly pathetic. Another backbencher I have never heard of.

Heritage gives these 10 the lowest rating.

Jo Ann Emerson- MO (she’s rated zero. This may be an error)
Chris Gibson - NY
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen - FL
Mike Grimm - NY
Mario Diaz-Balart - FL
Don Young - AK
Michael Fitzpatrick - PA
David Valadao - CA
John Runyan - NJ
Peter King - NY

As currently drawn, Hanna’s NY-22 is one of only two CDs in NY that Obama did not carry in either 2008 or 2012. True, McCain and Romney only got 49%, but that’s very impressive for Upstate NY in those two elections, and there’s no reason why a moderate-to-conservative Republican (particularly one who isn’t as pro-abortion as Chuck Shumer) can’t win there.

Regarding DesJarlais, the fact that state rep Joe Carr switched to the Senate race (he’ll be the conservative alternative to the terrible Lamar Alexander) means that it will be far easier to defeat him in the primary, since state senator Jim Tracy will be the only first-tier candidate running against DesJarlais. Carr and Tracy likely would have split not only the anti-DesJarlais vote, but also the huge Rutherford County vote (both are from the Murfreesboro area), and since TN does not have a run-off it could have allowed DesJarlais to sneak in with under 40%; now Tracy can take him out.

As for the Paulistinians, Amash and Bentivolio already have very strong challengers with local business support (Brian Ellis in MI-03 and David Trott in MI-11), and I don’t think that they will survive a one-on-one 2014 primary (Amash only won in a multi-candidate primary in 2010 by conning conservatives based on two years in the state house, but has since become the favorite Republican congressman of the Iranian government and Hamas; and Bentivolio only won in 2012 because he was the only candidate on the primary ballot after Thad McCotter dropped out, and the non-Paulistinian Republican who then opposed him in the primary had to run as a write-in). Thomas Massie does not yet have an opponent in KY-04, but he would have a much more difficult time defeating a single Republican from KY’s Cincinnati suburbs than winning an unimpressive plurality in a multi-candidate primary like in 2012.

The 0 score for JoAnn Emerson from Heritage must be for 2013—she resigned like in February, so she probably didn’t cast any key votes (or maybe she cast a single key vote, and voted against Heritage’s position). The others are mostly from districts that voted for Obama, with Alaska’s Don Young being the only one from heavily Republucan turf (his liw score likely comes from Young’s Alaska-suzed love of pork).

I gave up on Oregon on a statewide basis after a series of races from 1986-1990, and my instincts were confirmed by the stymieing of the OCA in the early 1990’s. Other than Smith, the last non-incumbent Republican to win a statewide race of any sort was Tony Meeker back in 1986 (Treasurer), and the two other incumbents to win were Hatfield (who had held some sort of office in Oregon requiring statewide election since first being elected secretary of state in 1956), and Packwood (spit), who won his won his fourth term in 1986 and his fifth term in 1992.

To put it another way, the state that has gone the longest without electing any democrat to office on the statewide level is presently Texas, where the democrats have been shut out since 1994. The Oregon Republican drought on the statewide level is 8 years longer—and I am fairly certain is the longest in the nation (at the governors level, I believe that Oregon is tied with Washington, but Washington presently has a Pub as Secretary of State.) The drought is somewhat masked by the fact that long-term Republican incumbents held both Senate seats until 1996, and the unsuccessful candidate in the special election in 1996 had built up enough of a ground game against the strongest potential candidate the Dems had that he was able to go on and defeat a much weaker candidate 10 months later, and then do quite well for re-election in 2002 (not a difficult year for incumbent Pubs).

The demographics are such that the legislature is so close that it appears within reach, but if the last round of redistricting did not do so, I am sure that as of 2022 the number of solid democratic districts will eliminate any possibility of actual control being achieved. This has been masked by the fact that from 1936-2006 the pubs did quite well in this area, but in the later portion of the run demographic distribution masked pub weakness (the dem vote is very inefficient in that much of it is concentrated in Portland and Eugene).

Congressional District 2 will remain Republican until the cows come home—but that is pretty well all that the future holds for the Republicans in Oregon besides minority leadership positions in the state legislature. (I grew up in CD 4, which is the third most competitive district, but has not elected a Republican since 1972, and last saw a close race in 1974). If a perfect storm happened, District 5 might go Republican briefly—but even in 2010 it was 5 points out, and that was the only time that it has been within single digits since Bunn, the last Pub to hold it, went down in 1996 while riding Dole’s coat-tails.

If we can find someone to take out Hanna, then I’m all for that. Like you say, he is essentially another Mike Castle.

I have not heard of Jim Tracy. I’ll look into him. If DeJarlais is not running unopposed, he should be easy to take down. The record speaks for itself.

Bentivolio’s opposition in 2012 is not someone I would have wanted, even against Bentivolio. She was a RINO, deeply involved with the Michigan Business Tax. If she runs again, I’d support Kerry over her. Better a Paultard than a libtard. That being said, looking at things closer, I think Bentivolio will just flake off anyway without any effort. His approval rating stands at 55% disapproval with only 28% approving of the job he’s doing. If he has any primary challenge, he’ll lose. I just hope its not the woman who ran last time.
Amash and Massie are Ron’s golden boys, and you know he’ll be money bombing for them. Hamas and company support Amash because he’s an isolationist, but his rating is 100 from the Club for Growth. Heritage gives him 86%. They give Massie 82. These guys may be loons on the terrorist threat, but unlike Peter King, they don’t want to spend money arming terrorists. All three voted with us during the shutdown too.

We have limited funds going into this thing, and if I’m choosing between removing Schock, DesJarlais, and Hanna or Bentivolio, Amash, and Massie, I’ll put my money into the former.
The libertarians are not really a large cohesive force. They don’t represent the threat that the RINOS do. After all, we didn’t just lose the shutdown battle because of Amash. We lost it because of Peter King and his buddies. 2014’s goal in my opinion is to take the senate at all costs, and decapitate the establishment in both chambers. We can deal with the libertarians at a later date if necessary. Let them be oddballs for the time being. We have bigger fish to fry.

Don Young is a POS, he always wins, even though he is a corrupt troll. I can’t think of a single Alaskan right now who could challenge him, though I would have preferred Joe Miller run for his seat than for the senate.

Pretty rural except for Portland, Eugene, and Salem, and the five counties that are dominated by these three metropolitan areas compose over 60% of the population. The other 31 counties do not have the power to over-ride these five.

Historically, the State has traditionally been very Republican since way back—but way back, the Republicans were the liberals. The West Virginia/Arkansas sort of Democrat persisted in parts of Oregon much longer than in most places outside of the South. Only with the coming of Reagan did the more conservative wing of the Pubs make much headway, helped in part by the swamping of the conservative Democrats by Californians. The state’s two long-serving Republican Senators (Hatfield from 1967-1997 and Packwood from 1968-1995) often cancelled each other out—Packwood was a social liberal, a hawk, and a bit more fiscally conservative, Hatfield a social conservative, a dove, and a bit more fiscally liberal). Wayne Morse, Packwood’s predecessor, served four terms, the first eight as a Pub, a bit more than two as an Independent, and ending as a Dem. Eisenhower’s selection of Nixon as VP was what pushed Morse into the Independent column. In 1960 he ran in 3 Dem primaries, and in the two involving JFK, ran to Kennedy’s left. McNary, Oregon’s previously longest serving Senator (1917-1944), was the Senate minority leader for most of FDR’s term, but an ineffective minority leader as he was on the Republican left and tended to support FDR against his own party—some things never change. He was the VP nominee in 1940—but Wilkie was from the left wing as well. The only other Oregonian to ever be on a major ticket was much more conservative—and a Dem—Joseph Lane, Southern Democratic VP nominee, 1860.

In short, think of Oregon’s Republican party as a New England Republican party traditionally pitted against a Southern Democratic party. Immigration and party switching has changed the face of the Democratic Party, and to a certain extent of the Republicans as well, but the conservatives have never dominated the party or the state. Libertarians, Populists, Conservatives, and Republicans have a complex history, especially in the west.

While Amash had a 100 rating from CFG in 2011-12 and averaged an 88 from ACU in those two years, he only averaged a 68 from the Family Research Council (casting several pro-abortion votes à la his mentor L. Ron Paul, and some other anti-family votes). But most disturbing were Amash’s ratings from liberal groups. In 2011-12 he got a 14% from the pro-government-union AFSCME—every other MI Republican, and most conservatives nationwide, got a 0%-and -a 16% from the environmentalist LCV (including 23% in 2012). In 2012, he also got a 38% from the ACLU, when other MI Republicans got 0% or 7%.

But the coup de grace were his ratings from ADA—Americans for Democratic Action—basically the liberal counterpart to the ACU and a group that has been rating votes for decades. In my experience, subtracting the ADA score from 100 is a better way to determine how conservative someone’s voting record is than looking at the ACU rating, given that on certain years the ACU underrates social conservatives through its key-vote selection. Well, the liberals at ADA gave Amash a 20% in 2011, which is the equivalent of an 80% from the ACU; not terrible, but obviously not Jim Jordan territory. And in 2012, when Amash really became an Ahmadinejad tool and when his Paultardness made him the Democrats’ favorite “conservative” useful idiot, he got a shocking 65%! At first I thought that it was a typo on Barone’s Almanac, but I looked it up at ADA’s website and it’s very much real: http://www.adaction.org/media/2012%20ADA%20Voting%20Record%20FINAL.pdf Check out the ADA scores for Republicans: most are between 0% and 15%, and I think that the only one at Amash’s level of treason was NC-03 Code Pink Republican Walter Jones, Jr., who pretty much returned to his Democrat roots around 8 years ago and who should be near the top of our primary-challenge list—it was a huge oversight on my part not to have mentioned him earlier.

While we have limited resources, Amash is one guy we should challenge, and the other guys I mentioned are wothwhile targets as well. It would be far wiser, IMHO, to go all out on those apostates to conservatism who sit in Republican districts while keeping our powder dry in Republican districts with imperfect, but still pretty good, conservative Republicans.

Charlie:
This e-mail is to officially advise you that your presence at my husband's memorial services will be unacceptable. I have watched over the years, as Bill had, your transparent attempts to manipulate the political arena. I don't want my husband's memorial service to be another opportunity for that and I will not tolerate anyone turning this into a platform for political gain. Please honor my families request.
Sincerely,
Beverly Young

Widow of Congressman Bill Young

DAAAAYUM. I was a tad skeptical of the possibility of her as a candidate for the seat. I now hope for it. Even if this is all a cynical effort to make herself attractive to the conservative base I still love it. She has some balls.

Mrs. Young said she also emailed Pinellas County Commissioner Charlie Justice and St. Petersburg lawyer Jessica Ehrlich - both Democrats who ran against her husband - telling them they were unwelcome at the memorial service.

"BILL SPECIFICALLY said he didn't want his memorial service to be a platform for local politicians to work the crowds. He's right. It's not only wrong , its disgusting to see that happen," she said. "HE GAVE me the names of the people he wished wouldnt show up, that was just three and we both know i dont care about poltical correctness so i took it upon myself to honor his wishes.I've been at many political funerals and listened to locals standing in groups planning their strategies. God gave people souls, but some don't know to take advantage of that God given gift."

Not much. It’s a pretty succinct description. While the Dems did have some Conservatives, that didn’t always extend to the federal level, such as the example of Richard and Maurine Neuberger. They did, however, have the curious example of Democrat Congresswoman Edith Green (who represented urban Portland) who started off fairly liberal and moved rightward (and I believe she endorsed Gerald Ford for President in 1976).

I’d have to say Oregon is not a state I’d cite as having produced any extraordinary political figures that lean in our direction. The sole GOP federal officeholder at present, Greg Walden, is a RINO. Probably the last respectable figure was ex-Congressman Denny Smith (no relation to Gordon, but first cousin to ex-ID Sen. Steve Symms), who sadly lost the Governorship in 1994 at a time when we were romping elsewhere.

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