The R.N.C. has made clear there will be penalties for not playing nice. It moved a February debate from NBC to CNN after candidates complained about their treatment in a debate on CNBC. Then it disinvited a conservative “partner,” National Review, from that debate after it dedicated an issue to attacks on Mr. Trump. (Mr. Trump also claimed credit for getting ABC to dump New Hampshire’s Union Leader newspaper as a debate partner after it was critical of him.)
.. So Mr. Trump’s war on Fox News isn’t just a media spat. It’s part of a war for control against the power structure of the G.O.P. — whose appeals to cultural anxieties he has hijacked and dialed up to 11 — and thus against Fox as an extension of it. (The bizarro-world possibility of a Fox News at odds with the Republican nominee, should Mr. Trump win, would be one more weird twist in a campaign full of them.)