This has been a project under way since the friggin' John Birchers and the postwar "think-tank" boom. They've (this specific set of interests, not conservatism in general) been successfully ratcheting things toward authoritarianism since their Chicago school pals got the right people in the right places to radically change how we enforced anti-trust in the '70s (that is, they made it impossible for us to enforce in all but the most egregious cases, period) and have been winning one boring but effective battle after another ever since (plus the occasional headline-grabbing one).

Often these victories have contributed to further momentum—concentration of wealth means more money for the cause; death of the "fairness doctrine" opens up the possibility of wholly partisan media for propagandizing, which was instantly capitalized on with a boom in right wing AM radio; Citizens United decision de facto ending campaign finance regulation, well that's sure convenient; all kinds of things.

This has been more than a half-century in the making.