2012 is going to be the most crucial election year in modern American history.

Fortunately Barack Obama is unlikely to be re-elected. Generally speaking the numbers against him are simply too overwhelming. But things could change. We conservatives must not become complacent or overconfident.

We must think every minute about what 2012 means in our plan to take America back from the jaws of destructive socialism. Because hard-left Democrats have taken over our nation incrementally over the past 100 years. Here are just a few of the results:

*An expanding bureaucracy of 22.5 million government workers on the local, state and federal level is strangling our economy. State and local workers alone consume more than $1 trillion in tax money for their salaries, benefits and pensions.

*Millions of handout poor live like the middle class without lifting a finger. They have not only food, clothing and shelter, but advanced medical care, cable TV, air conditioning, microwave ovens, color televisions, scooters to ride around on, and every other convenience. Meanwhile millions of taxpayers do without.

*Environmentalists control every facet of our economy and are preventing us from developing an efficient energy supply and good jobs.

*Excessive regulation, taxation and Big Government mandates are driving business and jobs from our shores.

*The American Media Left have become viciously dishonest in their manipulation of every story that comes along. They care only about promoting the Democrat agenda.

*Al Gore advocates with a straight face an absurdist end-of-the-world ‘global warming’ theory and is taken seriously by tens of millions of our citizens. As Gore accumulates a fortune estimated at $100 million.

*Ultra-wealthy Democrats like Nancy Pelosi vacation in luxury in Hawaii as Americans shiver without jobs and pay exorbitant costs for heating oil while the Democrat mantra is that “rich Republicans” are stealing everything.

The list never ends. In other words, the people who historically have done the hard work of building America are marginalized and those on the Freeloader Left get richer and fatter every day telling every lie in the book.

That is why we need more and more conservative Tea Partiers in the White House, in Congress, in state legislatures and even on town boards in order to tip the playing field away from unproductive people and back in favor of the productive citizens who are willing to work for what they have.

The signs are good. Since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the American people have seen the face of left-wing socialism and they do not like what they see. The Republican party has made huge gains in almost every election since Obama assumed the White House. Even Obama’s own US Senate seat fell to a Republican in 2010.

But this year will be crucial as well because we conservatives are not only fighting against the Democrat Establishment but the Republican Establishment too.

No, not all Republicans in Washington have gone over to the dark side. But far too many of them are not willing to confront the Obama agenda with force, which is what is needed. Because America is like a see-saw and the Democrats are all sitting on one end and keeping the rest of us off the ground. And the only way to change that is not to agree with them, or to meet them halfway, but to oppose them forthrightly, to get the weight on our end of the see-saw.

Fortunately 17 Democrats already are retiring from the US House of Representatives this year, as opposed to only 7 Republicans. This bodes well for conservatism.

And 23 of the 33 US Senate seats up for challenge in 2012 are currently occupied by Democrats. Imagine how dispirited we conservatives would be if the figures were reversed. And this recent news adds to the fun – Democrat US Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is retiring after two terms, opening the door for conservative Don Stenberg who spoke at the RedState gathering last summer in Charleston. (I urge you to attend the 2012 gathering. It is a real big-league political experience. Watch my column later this week for a full commentary about Stenberg.)

Already there are at least a net four Senate seats that are expected to go from Democrat to Republican and probably more. A new Republican majority in the US Senate is virtually a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile the massive GOP victory in many swing states in the November 2010 election is a harbinger of good things to come.

And who is our Republican presidential nominee going to be?

It certainly looks like it will be Mitt Romney because he has followed a tried-and-true course, running in 2008, losing and then trying again like Ronald Reagan did. Because Romney truly wants to be president; his campaign is not a lark. And while several challengers have risen and fallen, Romney seems to be remaining on top, although conservatives are not warming to him.

But if he is the nominee, all conservatives must support him. Because the alternative of four more years of Obama is outright unacceptable.

Indeed Romney is talking very tough about economics and national security and has some good conservative ideas about repealing ObamaCare and reforming entitlements. He also will put people of integrity into our Justice Department and Transportation Security Administration and everywhere else in government to replace the corruption that now exists.

Is Romney a genuine conservative like Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum?

No. But he is the big figure on the presidential scene. And that is what it is. And if he is the next president, he is going to realize that conservatism is the only path to saving the nation and he will act boldly. Because our national survival is at stake and Romney will realize that his legacy is on the line too. He certainly would want to be remembered by history as a transformative Reagan-like figure and indeed he can be. He knows the score.

In fact many subjects came up in this year’s presidential debates that we conservatives have been discussing for years like eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency and replacing it with a smaller bureau; a flat tax collection system; or Michele Bachmann’s sensible proposal that “everyone must pay taxes, even the poor, even if it is only ten dollars”. She even called for the shutdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This indeed is progress. Because we must understand that we are in a long-term struggle for the survival of our nation and that 2012 is the second step in reclaiming it. 2010 was the first.

Remember that Harry Truman was talking about ObamaCare-type health legislation in the 1940s and that it took until 2010 to pass it. So we must think long term about getting our nation back.

Is it going to take us 100 years to undo what it took socialism 100 years to impose?

No. We are going to undo much of it in 20 years. Because socialism is unsustainable and sensible Americans now know it and understand it.

Perhaps the election of Barack Obama backhandedly was the best thing that could have happened to us. Because it sparked the creation of the Tea Parties and has illuminated the conservative ideas that we have been espousing all along.

Suddenly millions of people who were casually involved in politics or who have been uncommitted are seeing the common sense in what we conservatives have been urging for decades. And it sure feels good to be validated and vindicated in a way that only is just beginning.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.