Howard J. Phillips, conservative activist and three-time presidential candidate, dies at 72
By Emily Langer,Published: April 24
Howard J. Phillips, a paladin of conservatism who helped lead the New Right movement in the 1970s and later ran three times as a third-party presidential candidate to defend the bedrock values he believed many Republicans had abandoned, died April 20 at his home in Vienna. He was 72.
He had frontotemporal dementia, said his sister, Susan Phillips Bari.
Long involved in Republican campaigns and causes, Mr. Phillips rose to prominence in Washington when President Richard M. Nixon named him acting director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Mr. Phillips’s chief task, widely understood at the time, was to dismantle the social programs created through Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.
A federal judge ultimately ruled such action to be illegal, and, to Mr. Phillips’s profound disillusionment, Nixon complied. Mr. Phillips resigned. He had been in office for only months but long enough to conclude that the conservative movement desperately needed a new burst of energy.
More at link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/howard-j-phillips-conservative-activist-and-three-time-presidential-candidate-dies-at-72/2013/04/24/20f3afbe-acec-11e2-a198-99893f10d6dd_story.html