Mitt Romney won another primary last night, clinching Texas.  With this victory, Romney has officially (though still not nominated) become the GOP nominee and will face Barack Obama in November.  In lock step, Politico today reported that “outside” (read, unregulated) conservative groups plan to spend $1B on the November election.  Again, that is $1,000,000,000.

Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives – including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress, according to officials familiar with the groups’ internal operations.

That total includes previously undisclosed plans for newly aggressive spending by the Koch brothers, who are steering funding to build sophisticated, county-by-county operations in key states. POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections – twice what they had been expected to commit.

How do we put this into perspective?