A truly sad day in Conservatism. Conservative Icon and award winning Journalist Robert Novak has died.

I really do not think that my mere words could ever measure up to those who have already paid tribute to him.

Tim Carney Pays tribute:

Bob Novak hired me away from HUMAN EVENTS in late 2001. “Poaching,” HE Editor-in-Chief Tom Winter called it. I was not the first early-20s reporter Novak would pluck from HE’s newsroom. Nor would I be the last.

Work for us Novak reporters, in addition to writing the Evans-Novak Political Report, consisted of doing “the opposite of research,” as I put it. Rather than trying to find an answer to a question Novak had — he had another staffer for that — we would try to dig up scoops, leads, and unreported nuggets to feed him.

That Novak would hire a leg-man to go around Washington sniffing out news reflected the virtue at the heart of his work: His columns, while they resided on the op-ed pages, were built upon previously unreported facts that revealed and explained the machinations of government, the men and women in power, and the politics behind it all. His job demanded he get a constant flow of new information, but curiosity and a thirst for knowledge were natural traits for him.

Bob Novak was, above all, a reporter.

I suggest that you read all of that tribute; as I feel that it is excellent.

CNN did a nice tribute as well:

Kenneth Tomlinson writes:

How many reporters, when George W. Bush named Paul O’Neill as his Treasury secretary, knew that he had been a pal of young government staffer Dick Cheney and that it was O’Neill who was the reason Gerald Ford’s vision as he opened his presidential campaign was “essentially that of a Washington bureaucrat.”? Of course Novak wrote the column. But did Bush (and Rove) ever come to see that Novak was right?

In recent years, some of Novak’s most significant work was done in association with Tom Phillips, who had begun publishing the bi-weekly Evans-Novak Political Report in1971 at Phillips Publishing and then had moved the newsletter to Eagle Publishing after he founded Eagle in 1993. Under the umbrella of the Phillips Foundation, Phillips and Novak developed the nation’s largest journalistic grant program for young writers — offering five-figure stipends to finance research and development of significant conservative books and articles that otherwise would not have been produced.

Not a Saturday night passes that I do not miss “Capital Gang.” Spring is not the same without the ACC tournament. I cannot pick up the Saturday New York Post or the Monday Washington Post without a sense of regret that the column is not there.

There was one thing about Novak that I admired greatly; and that is that he was skeptical of the Washington D.C. crowd. Something that I found myself to be quite a bit. He also was highly critical of the Bush Administration and much of its action that lead up to the Iraq War and afterwards. Novak did not carry water for the Republican Party; something that I highly admired about him.

You can read the roundup of opinions and memorials here at Memeorandum. Of course, there are some opportunistic liberals who are taking pot shots at the man at his passing. I find this to be totally offensive, and I told one so on a liberal rag blog that no one reads. I will not link to it; that would be sacrilegious. On the other hand, one of the bigger Liberal Blogs out there; which is ran by some marbled-mouthed ex-Republican, who knowingly married a gay man;  had surprisingly nice things to say about Mr. Novak.  Shocking indeed.

My deepest condolences to the Novak Family and most of all his many Children.

May Bob Rest in peace, as he has earned it.