It's intellectually dishonest to call out Kevin Phillips as "Reagan's conservative economist." He never worked for Reagan, never worked in the Whitehouse, opposed Reagan's tax cuts, and wrote a book criticizing Reagan's trade policies in 1984. He has written several additional attacks since.

By all means bring up Phillip's ideas, I agree with some of Phillips' critiques, but it is wrong to portray him as some sort of conservative insider. This is how Jacob Weisberg described him:

Phillips long ago left behind both obscurity and conservatism, becoming one of our most ubiquitous political commentators and one of the most left-wing. His biennial books have become illogical, dizzying screeds. And his diagnoses, predictions, and advice to Democrats have been consistently, embarrassingly wrong.

Forgive me; I misremembered. He was Nixon's man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Phillips_(political_comm...