Republican Strategist on the Extreme Corruption of the Bush Family

[StlMo]

The House of Bush


Rep. strategist Kevin Phillips on the Bush family's hunger for power

By Eric Bates


Listening to Kevin Phillips talk about politics, it's easy to mistake him for a populist firebrand from the 1890s. He rails against the growing inequality of wealth in America. He bemoans the unprecedented influence that private corporations hold over public institutions. He attacks the "smug conservatism" of George W. Bush and accuses the president of attempting to establish a family dynasty better suited to royalist England than to democratic America.

But Phillips is no left-wing demagogue. He's not only a lifelong Republican, he's also the guy who literally wrote the book that became the blueprint for the party's dominance of presidential politics. Phillips served as the chief political strategist for Richard Nixon in 1968, and, in The Emerging Republican Majority, he formulated the "Southern Strategy" that helped hand the White House to the GOP for a generation.

In his new book American Dynasty, Phillips lays out his almost visceral distaste for what he calls "the politics of deceit in the House of Bush," accusing the administration of dishonesty and secrecy that would make Tricky Dick blush. He traces the course of Bush's family over the past 100 years, detailing how they sought influence "in the back corridors" of the oil and defense industries, investment banking and the intelligence establishment. Elites, not elections, put Bush in power. "I'm not talking about ordinary lack of business ethics or financial corruption," says Phillips, who recently registered as an Independent for the first time. "Four generations of building toward dynasty have infused the Bush family's hunger for power and practices of crony capitalism with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the democratic and republican traditions of the U.S. government." As a result, he says, "deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks."

...

The family has made a big deal of the notion that it is descended from royalty. Burke's Peerage even got involved in the last election, saying that Bush won because he had the most royal ancestry. The Bushes eat this stuff up. They don't need democracy -- they feel entitled by ancestry. For them, the presidency is something that can be won with a Supreme Court decision.

...

http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2751

[ixion]

1. deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks

that is spot on. And it's something that many of us remember from the days of Poppy, only this time around, it's much, much, much worse.

[tibbiit]

2. Great article!

Great!
tib

[benfranklin1776]

4. Agreed.

It is as if they studied all of Nixon's dirty tricks and made them a manual of governance. This should be an excellent book.

It does confirm from the inside what many have observed from the outside, namely that the "family" is a collection of unrepentant, flat earth, monarch worshippers who have no use for the democratic process and believe that they are entitled to rule by the divine right of kings.

[wroberts189]

3. This is really good...

THANKS :)

[Amager]

5. Kevin Phillips is a Republican strategist?

Good article. That's the first I knew he was a Republican.