Another Disillusioned Conservative

Kevin Phillips, a former Nixon aide and author of the strategy that saw Republicans gain control of the South’s electoral politics has been moving away from positions he espoused in his youth. His current book, “American Theocracy” is a harsh criticism of Bush/Bush/Reagan policies over the past three decades. Here are a number of quotes as noted by John Judis in the May 22, 2006 The New Republic.

Over three decades of Bush presidencies, vice presidencies, and CIA directorships, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of ... a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex.

Under the Bushes the United States has embraced high-powered automobiles, air strikes, and invasions, become the world's leading Bible reading crusader state, and suffered from burgeoning debt levels and the implosion of American manufacturing.

W.'s election is a dynastic succession made possible by crony capitalism, campaign chicanery in Florida, and populist manipulation. The father's political Achilles heel was his cultural schizophrenia ... an unstable mix of genteel northern moderate conservatism and the two-gunned Texas brand. The son, with the cow country accent, the rumpled clothing, the chewing tobacco, the style of religiosity, the moral fundamentalism, the outsider language, the disdain for the Harvards and Yales, the six-gun geopolitics, and not least the garb of a sinner rescued from drink and brought to God by none other than evangelist Billy Graham, was almost a caricature overcorrection of several of his father's greatest political weaknesses.

George W. Bush and his father promote a reckless dependency on shrinking oil supplies, a milieu of radicalized (and much too influential) religion, and a reliance on borrowed money.

No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive, even a partial captive, of the sort of biblical inerrancy ... that dismisses modern knowledge and science. It favors military intervention in the Middle East to promote the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and the second coming of Christ, rejects the climate-change treaty because it is incompatible with the Book of Genesis, and believes in the rights of embryos and the prerogative of the sperm and egg to join over the arguable rights of women.

Some 30 to 40 percent of the Bush electorate, many of whom might otherwise resent their employment conditions, credit-card debt, heating bills or escalating cost for automobile upkeep (from insurance to gas prices), often subordinate these economic concerns to a broader religious preoccupation with biblical prophecy and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

The top four states where Bush has done better than Ronald Reagan--Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee--are fundamentalist and evangelical strongholds notable for their unimpressive rankings in education, mental health, child poverty and homicide rate. He even rejects the "car culture" and "hydrocarbon culture" of the South, Southern border states, and prairie states--noting that all thirteen states with 75 mph speed limits ... all lopsidedly backed George W. Bush for election. So did spectators at NASCAR events. This culture prefers conspicuous consumption over energy efficiency and conservation, and it sustains the rule of an oil, automobile, and national security coalition in Washington.