He "presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed, and dangerous shortsightedness.

While working as a strategist in the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon, Phillips wrote The Emerging Republican Majority.

In American Theocracy he admits that while these "mutations," as he calls them, could have been predicted, he did not foresee the extent to which they would develop and dominate the coalition he helped put together.

He criticizes the "SUV gas-hog culture" and points to geological estimates that oil supplies in most of the world have peaked, in the most pessimistic of views, or will peak within the next few decades, which ranks in with the optimistic view, with the result being prices continuing to increase and oil becoming scarcer.

Phillips cites quotes by U.S. President George W. Bush suggesting that he is speaking for God, and points to past leaders, such as Roman Dictator Julius Caesar who made similar statements.

He points to hostility by the social conservatives towards science in general, and Darwinian evolution in particular, but particularly focuses on the end-times prophecies of what he refers to as Christian Reconstructionists.

He argues that the pilgrims who emigrated to the New World before the American Revolution were religious outsiders, who were non-conformist and more radical than the establishment would allow (which was why they left Europe in the first place).

He then argues that after "fundamentalist religion" (particularly Evangelical and the newly formed Pentecostal branches) were set back after the Scopes Monkey Trial, they appeared to have been dealt a permanent blow.