Democracy Now: Kevin Phillips- 'On Roots of American Revolution, Future of American Politics'

Source:Democracy Now interviewing author and political historian Kevin Phillips.

Source:FreeState Now

"With the Republican Party in a state of turmoil following Mitt Romney's loss three weeks ago, we begin today's show with a guest who was once one of the most influential Republican strategists. In 1969 Kevin Phillips wrote the groundbreaking book, "The Emerging Republican Majority." Newsweek described the book as the "political bible of the Nixon administration." After a series of best-selling books on the Bush family, Wall Street and the American theocracy,  Phillips is looking back at the roots of the American Revolution in his new book, "1775: A Good Year for Revolution." "What happened that set the United States in motion in the mid 1770s is still relevant in some ways because what it showed was that you sometimes have to have a lot of very disagreeable politics to make progress. That you don't get anywhere by having all kinds of nice slogans and by trying to barter every difference with a cliche and pretend thats all's well and the United States is in wonderful shape," Phillips says. "The United States is not in wonderful shape and it needs to get back some of that spunk that it had when people were willing to talk very bluntly about harsh and tough measures." 

From Democracy Now

What Democracy Now really wanted to talk to author/historian Kevin Phillips about, was the thing and political strategy that remade the Republican Party to the point that it is today. It was a strategy that was co-authored by Richard Nixon in the mid and late 1960s and by at the time Republican strategist Kevin Phillips. What most people in America know as the Southern Strategy. 

Pre-1968 or so, the Republican Party was almost exclusively a center-right, conservative party, with a right-progressive faction in it, led by Nelson Rockefeller and others. The John Birch Society and others who are part of the populist-far-right in America, were Republicans as well back then. But pre-1968, the Republican Party was almost exclusively a center right party that's common in Britain and Europe. 

What the Southern Strategy did, was bring in what's called the Christian-Right in America, as well as people who opposed the civil rights and cultural revolution of the 1960s and into the Republican Party. To go along with the Classical Conservatives, people who Republican populists view as elitists and RINOS, into the party as well.