The next Great Conversations features journalist and political commentator E. J. Dionne, a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, discussing his book Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism – from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond. The program airs Monday, March 21 at 11/10 pm on KET.

Dionne, a native of Fall River, Mass., and a former Rhodes Scholar, joined The Washington Post in 1990 as a political reporter and has been writing a column for The Post – which is syndicated in more than 240 newspapers – since 1993. A regular analyst for MSNBC and NPR’s All Things Considered, Dionne is also a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and a professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches in the McCourt School of Public Policy and in the government department.

His latest book, Why the Right Went Wrong, published in January, has been called “a thorough exegesis of the stubborn recurrence of the fringe right wing … in a rapidly changing country” by Kirkus Reviews.

The book aims to trace the history of Republican politics from the Barry Goldwater era through the Reagan Revolution through the present “crisis” – tinged by what Dionne views as a bitter civil war within the Republican Party over the role of radicalized conservatism. It also attempts to play out a more modern, moderate brand of conservatism, which Dionne feels could save the movement.

Dionne was interviewed by James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic.

The program was recorded at Dionne’s and Fallows’ recent appearance at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum. Great Conversations: E.J. Dionne and James Fallows is a KET production. Producer-director is Tom Bickel, and executive producer is Teresa Day. Kentucky Author Forum is produced by Mary Moss Greenebaum and is sponsored by the University of Louisville, in partnership with Brown-Forman and The Humana Foundation.

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Todd Piccirilli
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