The late Jeane Kirkpatrick
By Josh Richman
Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 1:25 pm in General.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, the ardent anti-Communist who was Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy advisor during the 1980 campaign and then became the first woman to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, died in her sleep late Thursday night at her Bethesda, Md., home. She was 80.
The Oklahoma native – a registered Democrat until 1985 – delivered a famed “Blame America First” speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, wherein she coined the phrase “San Francisco Democrats” to describe leaders at that party’s convention who “treat foreign affairs as an afterthought” and fail to confront Communist threats. The phrase has seen a resurgence in popularity since Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, ascended first to House Minority Leader and now to Speaker-elect; many believe the phrase since 1984 has been twisted to denote conservative resentment of San Francisco’s embrace of gay rights and other liberal values.
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