Is Fox sliding any faster than the Republican party? I don't watch so I don't know, but maybe they're just tracking their target?
I don't know, because I quit watching.
If they are tracking the party, they are tracking something that has been moving Leftward since Goldwater lost, with the perception they can pick up Dems on the edge.
I don't think the GOP has made a serious move to the right since then.
They only have managed to slow the slide.
Reagan's success was that he managed to be inclusive without necessarily compromising on principle, but we had a real enemy in the USSR in those days before Communism was declared 'dead'.
(Best thing that ever happened for the Communists, they rebranded, doubled down under a half dozen names, and operated in the shadow of the ideology's tombstone for over a generation, enough time to pretty much wrap up the education and media industries.)
Now they are brazen, have a following indoctrinated to somehow believe 2+2=7, and that unlike Alaska (which issues checks from the State's oil royalties to all Alaskans) they are going to be able to issue checks to everyone with no source of wealth at all.
But the topics are Fox and the GOP, pursuing the "center" as defined by media, off into the left field cheap seats. If the 'Fair and Balanced" network is sliding left, the Party's perceptions of where the center is will move Left, too. Without anchoring principles, conservativism becomes relative to the Left, which has gone whole hog Communist and totalitarian, too. Even in this past election, despite the howls from the watchtowers, Republicans went for a candidate measured as "more conservative than Hillary".
That's setting the bar too low, imho.