President Bush might as well give up on his bold political bid to court evangelicals with anti-gay legislation. The Rev. Fred Phelps, mastermind of the virulent "God Hates Fags" campaign, calls Bush a "demagogue without any core values." Phelps tells Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson that Bush is "only doing this because he's losing what core support he had, and anyone with half a brain can see it. He's shameless." Even Kevin Phillips, the Nixon strategist who wooed Southern Democrats to the GOP, finds Bush's pandering unseemly: "Homophobia is replacing the set of flag and race issues of a generation ago. It's the last refuge of the scoundrel."
- Deborah