In one of the little acts of subversion that creeps into “The Simpsons” every now and then, a helicopter from Fox News was shown in 2010 with a logo, “Not Racist, But #1 With Racists.”

So it can be said of the Republican Party, a shelter for the kind of dead-enders who used to be Democrats, then Dixiecrats, but have found a home of sorts in the attic of the Party of Lincoln. It’s encouraging to see some party leaders trying to sweep these dark-hearted elements out, but they have work to do yet — starting with Donald Trump.

The accused killer of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., Dylann Roof, appears to have been moved to mass murder by incendiary tracts turned out by a white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. The leader of that same group, Earl Holt III, has donated more than $60,000 to various Republican office holders and candidates, including the presidential aspirants Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul.

The candidates, of course, are shocked — shocked! — that an extremist hate group would contribute to their cause, and most of them have now returned the money or given it to a fund for victims’ families. But it raises an obvious question: why would someone whose ideas belong in the graveyard of history contribute, across the board, to leading Republican conservatives?