Another Movement Conservative Exits the Fold

Four decades ago Kevin Phillips was the brilliant conservative political strategist who coined the phrase "sun belt" and described how Republicans could build a conservative majority and win elections by focusing on the south and their issues. He was right. But now we have Bush and his policies and the full fruition of Phillips' predictions, and Phillips is dismayed. He has a new book out, American Theocracy. This New York Times Book Review article gives us a glimpse inside:

Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.