R.I.P. Paul Weyrich
December 19, 2008| By David Talbot
Paul M. Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and the first president of The Heritage Foundation, died yesterday morning at age 66.
In a statement, Heritage President Ed Feulner called Weyrich "a truly visionary leader," with an "unerring eye for spotting the path to victory in the midst of seeming disaster."
"America has lost a great patriot with the passing of Paul Weyrich," Heritage Vice President Becky Norton-Dunlop wrote in the Wall Street Journal. "He was an individual who understood the miracle of America and believed it was worth investing a major part of his life in protecting and preserving it. So, he became a committed warrior for the principles that had undergirded the United States of America since its Founding and provided opportunity for the millions of individuals who are part of the fabric of our nation."
Writing on National Review Online, Heritage scholar Lee Edwards paid tribute to Weyrich's humor. "Paul may have had the fastest wit in Washington. Right after the operation to remove his two legs, he was visited by a delegation of young men from his church where he served as deacon. Looking at their long faces, he looked up from his bed and said, 'Well, I've been trying to think of something cheerful to say, but frankly I'm stumped.'"
Watch a memorial slideshow and read tributes from Weyrich's friends in the conservative movement on The Foundry, Heritage's blog.
The news media also paid tribute to Weyrich's work to strengthen the conservative movement.
The New York Times' "Caucus" blog: "'He brought leaders of various freedom impulses together,' wrote Grover Norquist on the Web site of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group. 'Most of the successes of the Conservative movement since the 1970s flowed from structures, organizations, and coalitions he started, created or nurtured.'"
Associated Press: "Conservative activist Paul Weyrich, who coined the phrase 'moral majority' and helped turn social conservatives into a powerful force in the Republican Party, died Thursday. He was 66.Weyrich's death was announced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think thank that he had helped to create."
Washington Times: "Within the past few weeks he had seemed to be reinvigorated. A lover of trains, he went by Amtrak with his wife, Joyce, and two of his sons -- Peter and Andrew -- to New York City to see the Rockettes at Rockefeller Center."
Washington Post: "More than any person, perhaps excluding President Ronald Reagan, whom he attacked as insufficiently conservative, Weyrich stitched the religious, social-issue voters into the secular fabric of the Republican Party. He co-founded the Washington-based Heritage Foundation in 1973 as a counterbalance to the liberal Brookings Institution and launched what became an influential network of conservative think tanks and talk radio shows that contributed to the culture wars of the past three decades."
FOXNews.com: "But although Paul became a fixture in Washington, he was never really of Washington. He was always true to his roots in blue-collar Wisconsin; his was a conservatism of Main Street, not K Street, or Wall Street."
Los Angeles Times: "Weyrich battled anyone who did not hew to core conservative beliefs. … At a Washington roast in 1991, Weyrich was teased by syndicated columnist Robert Novak for having upset so many people that "he gets hate mail from Mother Teresa."
Pittsburgh Tribune Review: "Weyrich, a former reporter, was a respected political strategist and prolific commentator. In 1973, he co-founded and was the first president of The Heritage Foundation, the model that think tanks follow. 'More than anyone else, he studied the organizing mechanisms of the left and applied them to create an effective conservative activist movement,' said former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a statement. 'Weyrich loved freedom and loved America.'"
Politico: "Paul Weyrich was hailed Thursday as a founding father of the conservative movement, a man whose commitment helped move the cause from the margins of American political life to the Oval Office. … Joining his boss, Colorado Republican Sen. Gordon Allot, one day at a meeting with civil rights and other left-leaning groups, Weyrich watched the liberal activists strategize as a coalition and was inspired to create a parallel apparatus on the right.
"'Here, before my eyes, was the whole panoply laid out,' Weyrich told reporter Ron Brownstein years later for a book on the rise of political partisanship in the capital. 'I had seen the effectiveness, but I didn't know the mechanics.'"
Townhall.com: "In co-founding the Heritage Foundation, Paul not only built one of America's great grassroots organizations, but helped to change the course of the Republican Party and the country itself. His fingerprints can be clearly seen on so many of the great conservative victories over the years."
Townhall.com tribute by Tom DeLay: "I was so blessed with the time to learn from Paul Weyrich as we worked together to build the Republican Study Committee and to ensure that conservative thought and action guided the Republican Congress. Up until my last days in the House, I could count on seeing him each week in my office, lunching around a table of conservative heroes – and, of course, he was always the most revered of the bunch."
United Press International: "In addition to founding the Heritage Foundation, Weyrich founded the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation and served on the board of railway giant Amtrak. Weyrich was also credited with coining the popular political phrase 'moral majority' during a 1979 religious gathering."
USA Today: "Conservatives are mourning the loss of Paul Weyrich, a savvy tactician and big thinker who drove the revival of the Republican Party after Watergate and was working on a blueprint for 'the next conservatism' when he died early Thursday at 66. 'He was on the frontlines for a very long time. We're really going to miss him,' said Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner, who knew Weyrich for 41 years."
U.S. News & World Report: "Who's the person most responsible for bringing evangelicals—who had retreated from public life in America after the public relations disaster of 1925's Scopes Monkey Trial—back into politics? Here's a hint: he co-founded the Moral Majority. It's Paul Weyrich, the powerful but low-profile conservative activist who died this morning. Weyrich was the behind-the-scenes architect of Jerry Falwell's very public organization, which began a legacy of evangelical political activism that has since been taken up by the likes of the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family."
Washington Examiner: "From the moment he arrived in the nation's capital, Weyrich knew what he believed and why, and he was blessed with a knack for undertaking efforts on the most vital issues that frequently helped shape modern American political history. At his last breath, he left behind a monumental list of achievements on behalf of individual liberty and limited government that will not soon be matched."
Washington Examiner op-ed by Richard Vigurie: "Along with William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan, he was one of the persons most responsible for the movement's successes. Over decades, he was a founder or co-founder of virtually every major conservative organization. Single-issue groups, PACs, foundations, lobbying groups – you name it, and, chances are, he had a hand in it."
CBNNews.com: "Despite his health, Weyrich continued work for the conservative movement, also writing several political columns. … The Heritage Foundation called Weyrich 'a true leader and a man of unbending principle.'"
Culture11.com: "He was not known by most Americans, but he was one of the most important conservatives of our time. As is the case in most human endeavors, best known doesn't equate to most important. … Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation, which through its dedicated research and study of important issues of our time, provides a solid grounding to conservative thought."
World Magazine: "'Give me a long enough lever,' said Archimedes, 'and I can move the world.' Paul Weyrich, who died yesterday at the age of 66, applied such leverage better than anybody in the conservative/Christian movement. He was that rarity of a man who, when you looked around the room, was both the most principled person there—and the most pragmatic."
Catholic.org: "In 2007 when I was doing research on the so-called "Christianists" for my book Religion of Peace?, I found paranoid Leftist writers referring to him as the "most powerful man in America." He wasn't, but his influence in advancing the wisdom of protecting individual freedom and limited government in an age of encroaching statism and collectivism cannot be calculated."
