Feulner has long been a contributor to Townhall.com and a leading voice on conservatism and the free market during his tenure at the helm of the Heritage Foundation. Under Feulner's watch, Heritage has grown into one of the premier think tanks in the world. His recognition is well-deserved.
In fact, without the Bradley Foundation and Ed Feulner, Townhall would not be the media organization you've come to know and love. The Bradley Foundation provided seed money to start Townhall in the early '90s when Townhall was a non-profit project of the Heritage Foundation.
While the Heritage Foundation is one of the clear leaders in conservative online advocacy in 2012 and it seems obvious that conservative groups have to be online, Ed Feulner was a critical advocate in the early 90's for getting conservatives online. While the Internet is part of everybody's life now, there was a time when intelligent people said it was a passing fad and printed direct mail and newspaper op-eds would be king forever. Against plenty of criticism and dozens of other worthy projects competing for Heritage's budget, Ed Feulner foresaw the importance of conservatives gaining a foothold on Al Gore's "Information Superhighway." Ed Feulner thought that the Internet was so critical to the conservative movement that in its early years of '94-'96, Townhall used the Heritage funding to build the very first websites for many of the movement's biggest conservative organizations and publications including National Review, Americans for Tax Reform, Family Research Council, the American Conservative Union and many more.
Townhall and the conservative movement online is indebted to Ed Feulner and the Bradley Foundation - and it's only fitting that Feulner is honored.