Lest average Americans believe that the 2010 Republican landslide in major US states and in the House of Representatives was a one-time fluke, think again. The conservative plan to take over America has been in the hopper so-to-speak for some 40 years. It has gone into a ruthless overdrive in the last twenty years, perhaps beginning with Newt Gingrich’s shutdown of the government in 1995-96 and the relentless Republican campaign to bring down Bill Clinton.

The plutocratic elite put a great deal of money, planning, and pressure on the endeavor to capture all elements of power: Wall Street, the media, the courts, and Congress, including all elements of the American culture. Democrats wittingly or unwittingly helped the effort along, mostly by caving in to relentless pressures from power elements controlling the conservative charge to power. For example, Bill Clinton caved to conservative pressure by supporting a so-called welfare reform and by signing a bill in 1999 to gut the last restrictions on Wall Street casino-type gambling.

By most appearances in 2012, the effort is almost a done deal. It’s like the 99%  have lower cabins in a sinking ship called American democracy and the 1% has all the lifeboats, controls the rescue boats and charges lifeboat admission to drowning passengers. For the passengers who survive, the elite own all the land and the ocean and steadily pollute the free air that we breathe. But a few vestiges of the 99% effort is left, though it is progressively beat down by the elite (for example, the Occupy Movement). A diminishing effort of journalistic disclosure of the takeover plans of the elite is still voluble.

An impressive bit of digging by two LA Times reporters helped reveal a hidden organization called Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR) that secretly sent more than $55 million to right-wing organizations during the 2010 election. The recipients of the money were organizations with mocking names emitting bitter ironies against the demonized and the downtrodden like Americans for Job Security, Susan B. Anthony List, American Future Fund, and 60 Plus.

All poured millions into defeating Democratic congressional candidates. Many of their championed Republican candidates were radicals secretly favoring billionaire causes of lower taxes for the rich and deregulation. Most were fronted as populist Tea Party grass roots candidates, but in actuality, were right-wing radicals, a fact that has bitterly been driven home by heightened obstruction of any people-centered program in the House of Representatives.

CPPR’s $55 million was mixed with some $304 million, all spent to support conservative candidates in the 2010 election cycle, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. According to this group much of the money came out of the pockets of the Koch brothers.

One can picture the background meetings between billionaire operatives, candidates and political planners. I can imagine scenes similar to criminal elements in Batman or Superman, contemptuously plotting dastardly deeds insuring the downfall of Democrats, writing the “deceptive jobs, jobs” script of right-wing candidates, the trickery of angst-ridden voters, chuckling with the deceit of patriotic organization names, praising Citizens United Supreme Court judges who had attended Koch-organized strategy meetings, and parceling out the millions in funds to their bought candidates.

It doesn’t matter if some of the Tea Party candidates elected really have principles. The criteria for choosing them wasn’t intelligence or legislative savvy. It was their radical views which insured an obstruction which would demean all legislators. Let money, voter manipulation, disenfranchisement in key states, and wedge issues do the rest.

Key states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan have greatly advanced the plan of the plutocrats. Immediately after their election, Republican majorities composed of candidates that had promised voters jobs, set out single-mindedly to destroy the opposition. All these states were unified in weakening Democrats by destroying public unions, dividing the populace even more, handing over public contracts to benefactor corporations, lowering taxes for the rich, and disenfranchising would-be Democratic voters. There is little doubt that billionaires like the Koch brothers are deep into the planning that united these Republican states. Scott Walker, for example, was actually recorded as he was planning strategy with a bogus Koch brother.

How does the future look? Not good at all.

The Koch brothers and their allies, according to Politico, “plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress, according to officials familiar with [their] internal operations,” with “Koch-related organizations” kicking in roughly $400 million of that. What the Koch brothers are contributing is more than John McCain spent on his entire 2008 run for the presidency.

Before we let this happen, look at what all Republicans are saying and doing. Put aside this vitriol, hate and angst that hate-mongers like Rush Limbaugh, and Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove have fostered until it now festers in our society. This is a strategy put together long ago by conservative think tanks which wanted to plan their takeover of what once was a society that cared about others and fashioned a blueprint for a hope-filled future.

Money is the kryptonite that could make our once Super democracy powerless. Too many are already on their knees, worshipping at the altar of money.

Make yourself immune to its corroding power.  Get yourself informed and know that your vote makes a difference.