Jerry Falwell is dead at 73

This is off MSNBC News:

LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, Liberty's executive vice president, said Falwell had been found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital.

Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but noted that Falwell had “a history of heart challenges.”

“I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast,” Godwin said. “He went to his office, I went to mine and they found him unresponsive.”

Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell’s physician, said the evangelist had had a heart rhythm abnormality. He said Falwell was found without a pulse and never regained consciousness.

I'll be honest here. I'm not sure if I want to feel sorry that Falwell died, or to celebrate Falwell for going to Heck as a result of his bigoted, homophobic, and sexist statements he has made during his life. But one thing I will say is that Jerry Falwell really the founder of the modern day Religious Right. Jerry Falwell was certainly not the first to incorporate television into religious services. But Falwell took the three separate entities of evangelism, television, and political lobbying, and then combined them into his Moral Majority political organization in the early 1980s. It was Falwell who showed the Religious Right how to use their political clout in order to achieve their social and religious agenda. And we can now see the political clout being exerted on the Republican Party through the new religious players as Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, or even the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed. This was the real legacy of Jerry Falwell.

One interesting question that I will pose now is how many Republican leaders will be attending Falwell's funeral? I'm pretty sure that President Bush will attend the funeral, and give a speech. But will the other GOP presidential candidates attend Falwell's funeral? Will we see Bush, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney all together at Falwell's funeral?