Jeane Kirkpatrick, a key player in former President Ronald Reagan's conservative foreign policy as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has died, the American Enterprise Institute, where she was a senior fellow, said on Friday.
She was 80 years old.
Initially the only Democrat in Reagan's cabinet-level team and for a time the only woman, Kirkpatrick later became a Republican who adopted an activist stance at the United Nations, hitting back whenever the United States was attacked.
Kirkpatrick was a major architect of U.S. policy in Central America.
The high point of her career probably came in August 1984, when she delivered an address in Dallas renominating Reagan for a second term that electrified the Republican Party convention.
When Reagan tapped her for the post of U.N. ambassador in 1981, Kirkpatrick took leave from her job as professor of political science at Georgetown University in Washington.
She died in her sleep at her home in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, according to CNN.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family.
For those interested, here is a link to her August 20, 1984, speech to the Republican National Convention.
