Kevin Phillips

Kevin Price Phillips (November 30, 1940 – October 9, 2023) was an American writer and commentator on politics, economics, and history. He emerged as a Republican Party strategist who helped devise its Southern Strategy in the 1960s. Phillips became disaffected with the party by the 1990s, subsequently leaving it to become an independent and staunch critic of the Republicans. He was a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Harper's Magazine, and National Public Radio, and was a political analyst on PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers. Early life Phillips was born in Manhattan in 1940, and grew up in the Bronx, raised by a family of Irish, Scottish, and English descent. He was drawn to the Republican Party from an early age, supporting Dwight D. Eisenhower for president in 1952 and 1956. He attended the Bronx High School of Science before earning a bachelor's degree in political science from Colgate University and a juris doctor from Harvard Law School; he also studied at the University of Edinburgh. Early career Phillips began his political career as an aide to Republican Representative Paul A. Fino. He worked as 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 political realignment in national politics and is widely regarded as influential in the field of American political science. Southern strategy Phillips told a journalist during the 1968 presidential election that "the whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who". After Nixon was elected, Phillips wrote a book on what has come to be known as the "Southern strategy" of the Republican Party. Entitled The Emerging Republican Majority, it argued that the southern states of the US would keep the Republicans winning presidential elections and more than offset the decline in Republican support in Northeast states, based on the racial resentment of white voters.