What is the most destructive force on the right?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Themselves, obviously.

[Indy Texas]

Other: the plutocrats who fund all these organizations as part of their effort to preserve their supremacy.

The emptying out of rural America, the decline of working class employment, and the over prescription of painkillers in the mid oughts.

Or, ya know, we can blame the talking heads.

This is based on the assumption that these social conditions "naturally" breed a reactionary ideology, as some claim war and poverty in the Middle East "naturally" breeds salafism. Both might be necessary conditions, but I'd rather take a Gramscian perspective on how cultures develop.

Also: Rural Americans have been in the minority since the Great Depression and outnumbered by more than 2-1 since the 1960s. And not all rural areas are experiencing depopulation and/or economic malaise, and some of those that are doing poorly are not and have never been particularly Republican-leaning. This cannot explain much about whatever is happening on the super-majority suburban American right.

Moreover, I'm not at all clear on what prescription painkillers have to do with this except as a symptom of underlying economic precariousness and social isolation.

I wish we'd get rid of this faulty assumption that Trump's voters are all pitiable, unemployed blue-collar workers in Dickensian Appalachia drowning their sorrows in pills and alcohol.

Most of the people who will vote for Trump this November are people who have been doing just fine in the "Obama economy" - Sunbelt suburbanites who are seriously convinced that Hillary Clinton would be an objectively worse president than Donald Trump are the really scary element of his coalition, not the sad hillbillies.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Moreover, I'm not at all clear on what prescription painkillers have to do with this except as a symptom of underlying economic precariousness and social isolation.

Vicious cycle, et cetera (although the drug of choice in my particular corner of depressed small-town America is heroin. It gets passed up from dealers in Springfield as part of a perverse barter economy also involving guns coming down from Vermont).

I'm perfectly willing to admit that I emptyquoted the answer that's most to blame for the problems in my particular area without really considering whether or not my area is representative.

[ElectionsGuy]

Fox News is the most powerful, but options 2-5 are much more severe in terms of saying what people actually think. Fox News has this fakeness where they would look to an uninformed individual like a valid news source but there's an implied direction of thinking as a result of their commentary. Talk radio and others are only going to appeal to people firmly on the right.

[FairBol]

I believe the disunity in the Republican Party is contributing to political defeats.  We need to stand united, and nominate better candidates.  :-/