Mark Karlin at BuzzFlash:

The modern “conservative” movement is nothing more than a massively funded and highly effective communications strategy to shift America into an oligarchy that functions for the super wealthy through tax cuts and for corporations through the elimination of safety regulations for the public good and the privatization of government.

That’s not conservatism; that’s highway robbery. It’s a crime.

All this came about through the organized strategy and financing of wealthy financiers and corporations to build a network of think tanks, media-owned outlets, reporters toting the oligarchy line on the “benefits” of unrestrained “free trade,” public relations initiatives, and front organizations to move America from an evolutionary society relying on the strength of innovation and a dynamic educated middle class to a relatively static society in which those at the top are in a members-only club growing obese with wealth while kicking others down from the ladder to the top and demanding tithes from them.