-The latter is true - almost by definition, since the government is -dominated by Bushies. But if you mean the ruling class in general, -yes, that too, though the big biz positions are probably not as loony -as Bush's. (His position on Kyoto, for example, is worse than -Ford's.) With the general public, though, the right-wing agenda has -little appeal. There was little support for tax cuts, for example.
I think it is even true that parts of the ruling class are not as ennamored as they once were with various forms of deregulation, since they are beginning to see the losses from it when poorly done, since "deregulation" is never neutral but merely a form of government intervention that can spin as "out of control" - in business's view - as they previously saw the Keynesian state doing. The antitrust campaign against Microsoft, the rethinking of airline deregulation, the electricity debacle in California, the AIDS crisis and the tuberculosis blowback threatening first world nations, the NASDAQ bubble and fallout, the eroding of spending on basic science, and the standards wars undermining and delaying the implementation of many new technologies -- all of these are forcing some rethink among many elite sectors.
I think THE ECONOMIST is a leading indicator and since Seattle, after their initial hissy fits, have been opening up their pages to far more alternative analyses to economic regulation. I nearly had a heart attack a few weeks ago when they argued that Internet standards bodies have come to be too dominated by industry and probably need more government funding and support to assure standards that will work.
It is not a swing to socialism but the era of triumphant "market as God" rhetoric that was the mark of Thatcherism-Reaganism does seem to have lost its intellectual cachet even among the elite. As always, the business elite want policies that benefit them, but that can as easily be government interventionism as Thatcherite market mania. The former seems to be ascending at the expense of the latter.
Bill Kristol does reflect this, since he is promoting what he calls a strong Hamiltonian state is support of "National Greatness" conservativism. He sees McCain as the new embodiment of this trend.
-- Nathan Newman