Kevin Phillips

Kevin Phillips (born November 30, 1940) is an American writer and commentator on politics, economics, and history. Formerly a Republican Party strategist, Phillips has become disaffected with his former party over the last two decades, and is now one of its harshest critics. He is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio, and is a political analyst on PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers.
Phillips was a strategist on voting patterns for Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign, which was the basis for a book, The Emerging Republican Majority, which predicted a conservative realignment in national politics, and is widely regarded[citation needed] as one of the most influential recent works in political science. His predictions regarding shifting voting patterns in presidential elections proved accurate, though they did not extend "down ballot" to Congress until the Republican revolution of 1994. Phillips also was partly responsible for the design of the Republican "Southern strategy" of the 1970s and 1980s.
The author of fourteen books, he lives in Goshen, Connecticut, in Litchfield County.
Phillips was educated at the Bronx High School of Science, Colgate University, the University of Edinburgh and Harvard Law School. After his stint as a senior strategist for the Nixon campaign, he served a year, starting in 1969, as Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, but left after a year to become a columnist. In 1971, he became president of the American Political Research Corporation and editor-publisher of the American Political Report (through 1998).
In 1982, the Wall Street Journal described him as “the leading conservative electoral analyst -- the man who invented the Sun Belt [a phrase also attributed to legendary Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Sam Rayburn], named the New Right, and prophesied ‘The Emerging Republican Majority’ in 1969.”
Later, he became a critic of Republicans from the south and west, the area he had identified the "Heartland" as the future core of Republican votes. He had also identified the "Yankee Northeast" as the future Democratic stronghold, foreshadowing the current split between Red States and Blue States. More than 30 years before the 2004 election, Phillips foresaw such previously Democratic states as Texas and West Virginia swinging to the Republicans while Vermont and Maine would become Democratic states.
List of works
• Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2007) ISBN 0-670-01907-0
• American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006) ISBN 0-670-03486-X
• American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (2004) ISBN 0-670-03264-6
• William McKinley (2003)
• Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (2002) ISBN 0-7679-0533-4
• The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America (1999)
• Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street and the Frustration of American Politics (1994)
• Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle Class Prosperity (1993)
• The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (1990)
• Staying on Top: The Business Case for a National Industrial Strategy (1984)
• Post-Conservative America (1982)
• Electoral Reform and Voter Participation (with Paul H. Blackman, 1975)
• Mediacracy: American Parties and Politics in the Communications Age (1974)
• The Emerging Republican Majority (1969)