Who's Sorry Now Part II

We discussed Kevin Phillips' book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, here the other day.

There are a number of Republicans who don't like what they see. The latest is Kevin Phillips who predicted the Republican majority and the methods the Republicans would use to get there. Well he's seen it come to pass and he is having buyers remorse and doesn't like what he sees. Alan Brinkley explains in Clear and Present Dangers. While Phillips is upset about the budget deficit and the fact that US foreign policy is built entirely around oil hegemony but his major fear is the rise of the theocrats.

Over at Democracy Now Amy Goodman has an interview with Mr Phillips that is a must read. Go read the entire thing but here is some of what Phillips had to say.
Bush as president:

I’ve talked with a number of conservatives, people running conservative publications, old aides from the Republican campaigns back in the 1960s and 1970s, and everybody agrees, and some are even starting to say it semi-publicly: this man [Bush] is a national embarrassment.

On Iraq:

This is just a convergence of the ineptitude of one man, of the complicity of a number of other senior people in the administration -- I don't know their exact motives -- and a horrible situation for the Pentagon, because the Pentagon realizes that the American soldiery in Iraq is being brutalized in a way that then casts disrespect on the American army, that interferes with recruitment. I, two years ago, gave a talk near Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and already dozens of people from the military were saying that this was going to be a black eye. And it’s worse than a black eye. And you really have to say, and I have to say, that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, if we had a parliamentary system, they would be there before the bar of the Congress, having to defend this. And that's where they should be.

The Religious Right:

What you’ve got is that 45% of American Christians believe in Armageddon, and the more religious ones, the fundamentalists and evangelicals more than anybody else. So, my assumption is that the Bush electorate is probably 50 to 55% people who believe in Armageddon and probably more or less the same numbers who believe that the Antichrist is already on earth. And when you have this backdrop and you have a president who got his start in national politics as his father’s liaison with the religious right back in 1987 and ‘88, you just have an enormous exposure to this whole psychological context and an awareness on the part of people in the White House that this huge constituency interprets the Middle East in this very unusual way.

Go read the entire interview.