You can call this a conspiracy or not (I don't really care), but it's certainly undemocratic and unsavory: American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

"ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve "model" bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.)

Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations — without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills."

With shit like this going on behind the scenes, almost completetly unknown and unreported, it's no wonder some people get the idea that there's a shadowy group of powerful elites trying to steer the course of our country and bypassing the democratic process.