"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul." (in a February 1991 article for Life Magazine )
        "I was wrong to follow the meanness of Conservatism. I should have been trying to help people instead of take advantage of them. I don't hate anyone anymore. For the first time in my life I don't hate somebody. I have nothing but good feelings toward people. I've found Jesus Christ - It's that simple. He's made a difference."

• Richard Viguerie has been one of the architects of the Conservative movement for some 40 years or more and he is so disgusted with the current Republican White House and Republican-ruled Congress that he has published a book that urges Conservatives like himself to turn their backs on the Republican Party in the upcoming elections.

• David Kuo served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003. A self-described conservative Christian, Kuo’s previous experience includes work for prominent conservatives including former Education Secretary and federal drug czar Bill Bennett and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.   David was so disillusioned with the Bush administration's behind the scenes contempt for the religious community that he wrote a book published in Oct., 2006 to expose the hypocrisy of Bush and company. The book is called "Tempting Faith" and there is a long review of the book as well as a lengthy video of the MSNBC journalist Keith Olbermann commenting on the book, at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15228489/.

• Pat Buchanan has recently published this new book Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency.

  

• Andrew Sullivan is another disillusioned Conservative, usually Republican, spokesman who has just published a book on the topic, called "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back".

• Barry Goldwater was one of the most famous leaders of the Conservative movement in the United States. And his book "Conscience of a Conservative" has been the bible of American Conservatism. According to John Dean, (the one Republican in the Nixon administration who demonstrated that he had a conscience), had he lived, his close friend Barry Goldwater would have co-authored this latest book published by Dean, in Sept. of 2006, "Conservatives Without Conscience" .  "John Dean takes a sobering look at how radical elements are destroying the Republican Party along with the very foundations of American democracy."

• "The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story."

  [ from : amazon.com/Justice-Inside-Scandal-Rocked-Administration/dp/0470261978]

• In an important article, in The Washington Monthly, October 2006 Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley, argued in "Let’s quit while we’re behind" that Conservatives should replace the current crop of "incontinent Conservatives" with Liberal Democrats in the November elections of 2006.

• When White House attorney Egil "Bud" Krogh was just 31 years old, he directed President Richard Nixon's "Plumbers" unit, a group charged with preventing the "leaking" of classified government information which was embarrassing to the Nixon administration.   Krogh authorized the infamous 1971 break-in that spiraled into the Watergate scandal that put Krogh in jail and decimated the careers of countless others, not the least of which was Nixon's.
          After pleading guilty of Watergate crimes, Krogh served a brief prison sentence, was disbarred for a time, but has since returned to honorable service as a lawyer and in he plans to publish a book entitled, "On Integrity: Lessons of a Nixon White House Lawyer," in early 2007.

• The former Republican Governor of Delaware, Russ Peterson in his book, Patriots, Stand Up!, wrote, "Our cherished American way of life is under attack by the far right-wing Republicans who are now running the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.  This is the product of a conspiracy that has been growing over the past few decades through the use of evil tactics and strategies, lies and deceptions to transform America. "Deception is now the hallmark of the Bush administration.  Read of the frightening chicanery in furthering an imperial strategy, nurturing the military-industrial complex, waging war on the environment, plunging the nation into debt, demeaning the needy, antagonizing the world and using terrorism to frighten and exploit."  Peterson calls on patriots to apply the principles of democracy now to retake America from a conservative elite that controls the country.
          Russ Peterson is a scientist, public servant, business executive, citizen activist, who has been an executive with the DuPont Co., Republican Governor of Delaware, assistant to Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, head of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality under Presidents Nixon and Ford, head of the Office of Technology Assessment, reporting to six Republican and six Democratic members of Congress, internationally acclaimed environmental leader, United Nations goodwill ambassador, and faculty member at Dartmouth College, Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin Madison.  His numerous national and international awards include 15 honorary doctorates.  In 1996 he became a Democrat.. [ www.governorpeterson.org ] .

• The son of Dr. Francis Schaeffer, one of the leading lights of Conservative Christianity in America has been a lifelong Republican, but explains here why "I am leaving the GOP"
  November 1, 2006
          I'm a Christian, a writer, a military parent and a registered Republican.
          On all those counts, I was disgusted by an e-mail I just received that's being circulated by campaign supporters of Republican George Allen, who's trying to retain his Senate seat in Virginia.
          The message goes like this: "First, it was the Catholic priests, then it was Mark Foley, and now Jim Webb, whose sleazy novels discuss sex between very young teenagers. ... Hmmm, sounds like a perverted pedophile to me! Pass the word that we do not need any more pedophiles in office."
          Democrat James Webb is a war hero and former Marine, wounded in Vietnam and winner of the Navy Cross. He was writing about class and military issues long before me and has articulated the issue of how the elites have dropped the ball on military service in his classic novel Fields of Fire. By the way, that's a book Tom Wolfe calls "the greatest of the Vietnam novels."
          Mr. Webb's son is a Marine in Iraq. That's an uncommon fact in this era in which most political leaders' children act as if it is only right and proper that it's someone else's war to fight.
          Mr. Webb also happens to be running against a desperate opponent supported by people who circulated the stupid e-mail, something that reminds me of a 2000 smear campaign aimed at another war hero, John McCain.
          I never served in the military. It was my son's unexpected volunteering that connects me to the military family and to my country. And I've been voting Republican for years. My late father Dr. Francis Schaeffer was an evangelical theologian, friend to Jerry Falwell and White House guest of Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and the first President Bush.
          I have nice handwritten letters from various members of the Bush family, including Barbara, thanking me for my books on military service. So I have every reason to stay in the Republicans' good graces. (It's nice to be complimented on television by the First Lady.)
          But enough is enough. I've had it with Republican smears.
          The Webb e-mail is the embodiment of the cynical Republican strategists, some of whom must know the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Was Agatha Christie a murderer because she wrote about murder?
          According to the Allen camp's logic, God would be a pedophile, too. After all, we Christians believe God inspired the Bible. And God-the-author chose to include the "sleazy" story about Lot offering to send out his young virgin daughters to be raped by the men of Sodom.
          The Bible has masturbation scenes, rape, pedophilia and God's favorite man King David warming himself with a young virgin in his old age. He's the same man God tells us committed murder after he indulged his peeping Tom fantasies.
          Lucky for God-the-author that He's not running against George Allen.
          I just got back from a visit to Parris Island and was struck again as I was on the proud day of my son's boot camp graduation there as a Marine in 1999 by the moral credibility of the drill instructors and selflessness of the recruits.
          Our political leaders should learn from them. In fact, our future leaders should be them. We need to compare today's leaders to those of the past, who earned credibility beyond the reach of cynicism and irony and cheap smear tactics.
          People like Mr. McCain who is "for" the war in Iraq and Mr. Webb who is "against" the war should be respected no matter one's politics or ideas about the war. Why? Because they paid their dues.
          My wife and I have reached the tipping point. We plan to go to town hall to dump our Republican voter registration and re-register as independents. I don't care anymore what party someone is in. These days, what I care about is what they're made of. Wartime demands leaders with character and moral authority. The political party smearing Mr. Webb proves it has neither."
  

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          In 2007 Francis Schaeffer published his autobiographical book Crazy for God in which he distanced himself from "the Religious Right" and express remorse for some of the things he and his father had done to promote the fortunes of that misguided movement.