Pardon me while I puke
>"In the US, conservatives have a lock on the government and public opinion."
They THINK they do. And you have a tendency to repeat it because it makes you feel secure, when in effect, I think it makes you sound smug.
Conservatives will be dying off holding on to their ill-begotten monies with their cold, clammy hands as the market dives and there will be no one there to catch them when they fall.
They will lose all sense of themselves as the world morphs into new areas in which they find themselves ill prepared. Watch my words. The harder they try and hold on, the weaker and more vulnerable they will become.