A powerful narrative about the U.S. Constitution’s origins and purposes celebrates its system of checks and balances for diffusing power across many venues, limiting the potential for government tyranny, and protecting political minorities. In contrast, scholars of American political development and political economy see a more problematic constitutional structure, one of fragmentation and veto pointsVeto points, which generates a powerful status quo bias and facilitates access to power by already powerful elites. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate the intersection of, and positive feedback between, the fragmented political institutions of the U.S. political system, the conventional constitutional narratives that legitimate them, and the politics of the American right. Doing so reveals important and often overlooked dimensions of contemporary right-wing politics in the United States.