George Scialabba in The Nation. I couldn’t have said it better myself, or I would have.

Don’t take the New Deal for granted. Most Americans, even Republicans, do, which is why many former Democrats have felt free since 1980 or so to vote Republican. But American capitalism in the post-World War II decades was not fully mobile, constrained by financial regulation and ideological competition. Now, thanks to the collapse of pseudosocialism, the triumph of the IMF-enforced Washington Consensus and a great deal of covert and overt regime change in the Third World, American capitalism is mobile and mean. The fundamental purpose of American foreign policy has always been to prevent the spread of the New Deal to the developing world. Having largely succeeded there, the business elites are now determined to roll it back at home.