Charles Krauthammer, prominent conservative voice, has died

NEW YORK (AP) - Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and pundit who helped shape and occasionally dissented from the conservative movement as he evolved from "Great Society" Democrat to Iraq War cheerleader to denouncer of Donald Trump, died Thursday at age 68.

His death was announced by his longtime employers The Washington Post and Fox News. Krauthammer had announced a year ago he was being treated for a cancerous tumour in his abdomen and earlier this month revealed that he likely had just weeks to live.

"I leave this life with no regrets," Krauthammer wrote in the Post, where his column had run since 1984. "It was a wonderful life -- full and complete with the great loves and great endeavours that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended."

Sometimes scornful, sometimes reflective, he was awarded a Pulitzer in 1987 for "his witty and insightful" commentary and was an influential voice among Republicans, whether through his syndicated column or his appearances on Fox News Channel. He was most associated with Brit Hume's nightly newscast and stayed with it when Bret Baier took over in 2009.

Krauthammer is credited with coining the term "The Reagan Doctrine" for President Reagan's policy of aiding anti-Communist movements worldwide. He was a leading advocate for the Iraq War and a prominent critic of President Barack Obama, whom he praised for his "first-class intellect and firstclass temperament" and denounced for having a "highly suspect" character.

Krauthammer was a former Harvard medical student who graduated even after he was paralyzed from the neck down because of a diving board accident, continuing his studies from his hospital bed. He was a Democrat in his youth and his political engagement dated back to 1976, when he handed out leaflets for Henry Jackson's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

But through the 1980s and beyond, Krauthammer followed a journey akin to such neo-conservative predecessors as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, turning against his old party on foreign and domestic issues. He aligned with Republicans on everything from confrontation with the Soviet Union to rejection of the "Great Society" programs enacted during the 1960s.

"As I became convinced of the practical and theoretical defects of the social-democratic tendencies of my youth, it was but a short distance to a philosophy of restrained, free-market governance that gave more space and place to the individual and to the civil society that stands between citizen and state," he wrote in the introduction to "Things That Matter," a million-selling compilation of his writings published in 2013