Lecture by Professor David Domke

Posted: 09.30.05

Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - 7:30 p.m.

The Echoing Press, Morality, and Nation:
Why the Republican Party Dominates American Politics Today

Campus Club, University of Washington
Reservations required: (206) 543-0437

In the early 1960s, the Democratic Party occupied the White House and held significant majorities in both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court at the time was in the midst of a string of progressive decisions that sought to bring equality, justice, opportunity, and liberty to a wide range of societal groups. The New Deal ideology and coalition seemed to be unchallengeable. Wrong. Four decades later, conservatives are in command of American politics, holding the White House, both chambers of Congress, and the Supreme Court. More state legislators are Republican than Democrat for the first time in half a century, and more U.S. adults self-identify with the Republican Party today than at any time in U.S. polling history-even though Americans consistently hold issue positions that are far more common among Democrats and progressives. These over-time shifts are not merely cyclical trends in the political system. The ascendancy of U.S. political conservatives is due to their coordinated, several decades-long campaign to merge ideology, strategic public rhetoric, and calculated usage of mass media. This talk will examine this shift, consider the current political and media contexts, and discuss likely directions that American politics will take.

David Domke is an Associate Professor and Head of Journalism in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. He worked as a journalist for several newspapers in the 1980s and early 1990s, including the Orange County Register and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, before earning a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota in 1996. Over the past decade his research and teaching interests have focused on the relationships among U.S. politics, journalism, and public opinion. This research agenda has produced more than two dozen articles in leading academic journals and a 2004 book that examines the strategic religious rhetoric of the Bush administration and the mainstream press's response, God Willing?: Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press, published by Pluto Press in London and Ann Arbor. In 2002, be received the University of Washington's Distinguished Teaching Award, the university's highest honor for teaching. In recent months, he has spoken to leaders of the Democratic Party, a wide range of politically engaged groups across the nation, and also has conducted workshops on identity, language, and strategy.