Yes it's FOX News. Yes it's Right Wing Radio. But mostly it's the Republican Party
It's been centuries since our American democratic system evolved into a two party state. It's is not a coincidence that for all practical purposes the term "bi-partisan" is taken in many cases to mean exactly the same as "non-partisan." Two political parties by default are the guardians of our Democracy. Because 90% of American political activity is directed too flow through one of those two channels, there has been an unspoken presumption that each of them is broad based enough to resist becoming a mere front for deeply anti-democratic and extremist views.
True American extremists have historically usually been relegated to organize through shadow organizations and fringe political parties. At times they have tried to capture one of America's two reigning political parties. Racists have made serious runs in the past to control the Democratic Party, sometimes wholly succeeding at the State level. Fanatical "anti-Communist" right wingers moved to control the Republican Party with Joseph McCarthy as their spearhead, and they gained quite a foothold in it at the time. Ultimately more responsible elements within each Party fought back and pushed back the extremists. The 1968 National Democratic Convention was noteworthy for many reasons, but one of them was the floor fights to prevent segregationist oriented Party delegations from being seated at it. William F. Buckley and others aligned with him famously led a (then) successful effort to delegitimize the John Birch Society within Republican ranks.
That was then this is now. When our Constitution was written it was believed that our legislative branch of government would jealously guard its ceded authorities from encroachment by the Executive branch. When our Constitution was written we did not have political parties, so the President was not predicted to someday be universally viewed as the leader of a standing political bloc. Political parties in essence have become the unofficial fourth branch of American government, nowhere to be found in the Constitution but everywhere to be seen in practice. Political parties as institutions are not literally sworn to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. But it is through political parties that all American Presidents for centuries have been vetted and presented to the American people as viable potential leaders of our democracy.
Political actors such as David Duke have repeatedly in the recent past been repudiated by both of our major political parties. When a true extremist in recent years has managed to somehow secure a major party nomination, that party has broken ties with that person and urged their defeat at the ballot box. In that way our two party system had worked as a check on radical extremism.
What is happening today with the Republican Party is a new and very dangerous development for our democracy. The national Republican Party has turned over one of the only two current sets of keys to the White House to a racist, deeply self serving individual with no loyalty to the principals that underpin our freedoms and our grand experiment in self government. They fervently shy away from any efforts to uncover the depth of this President's own corruption. The Republican Party had a choice, and it has chosen to swear allegiance personally to an aspiring despot hell bent on creating a cult of personality around him, rather than to the U.S. Constitution. In so doing they provide Trump with the cover he requires to subvert the very same Constitution that Republicans have long ingenuously claimed to honor. This is on them.
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