Another Conservative Champion has Died

This morning conservatives were greeted with the news that Paul Weyrich died at the age of 66. Paul Weyrich was one of the leaders of the Reagan Revolution and has been lovingly referred to by some as the father of the modern conservative movement. He founded the Heritage Institute, Moral Majority,was a member of the Arlington Group, and when he died he was the President of the Free Congress Society. He was a principled leader and he will be missed. The old generation is passing hopefully new young principled people will rise up to be leaders in the conservative movement.

The following are a collection of early tributes to Paul Weyrich.

The Heritage Foundation

Paul M. Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and the first president of The Heritage Foundation, died this morning around 1 a.m. He was 66 years old. Weyrich was a good friend to many of us at Heritage, a true leader and a man of unbending principle. He won Heritage’s prestigious Clare Boothe Luce Award in 2005. Weyrich will be deeply missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, including son Steve, who currently works at Heritage.

Grover Norquist

Paul Weyrich created institutions and networks that incubated new and old powerful policies and strategies to advance liberty. ... He brought leaders of various freedom impulses together. Most of the successes of the Conservative movement since the 1970s flowed from structures, organizations, and coalitions he started, created or nurtured. Paul also lived a balanced life with work, family and his faith. We will miss his puns and wisdom and hard work.

Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online, who had the first word of his passing, called Weyrich "a Washington conservative institution" and "a patriot who lived a long life serving his nation."

Tony Perkins

My good friend Paul Weyrich is gone. He was just sixty-six years old. Many people will be surprised at that. That's because we've watched Paul for decades as he battled diabetes, as he suffered amputations, but never, never any loss of his fighting spirit. Paul Weyrich has been a fixture in Washington, D.C. for more than thirty years. He fathered the religious conservative movement in American politics. He didn't over-intellectualize about Christians "jumping into the fray." He recognized early that the fray had jumped onto us. Liberal bureaucrats were coming after us -- in our churches, in our schools, and in our families. Wherever a Planned Parenthood worker is breaking parents' hearts by leading their children into sin, we have a grievance against our government. Paul Weyrich was the first to show us how we could effectively petition our government for redress of our grievances. May our Lord keep His servant, Paul. And I pray our Lord will also comfort the loving Weyrich family.