The right-wing media has been dialing up the rhetoric and hate over the years, pushing the boundary farther and farther. Exactly why, or if it was even purposeful, is unknown. Maybe the right-wing politicians pushed the right-wing media and thinktanks to do it so that they could win elections, maybe it was just politics, but I think it is actually ideological, an actual hatred and antipathy for liberalism, multicultiralism, and, in the end, democracy. The GOP, these days, basically is promoting party rule, that the US should be governed by the Republicans with the Democrats simply accepting what the GOP tells them to do.