Your analysis is much like my own and I agree with most of what you say. However I am not comfortable with the description of what happened after the war as competition in a market of ideologies (though I can see why that is an attractive shorthand).
For me the roots of the right wing retreat were in the outcomes of that ideology in the 1930's. The peoples of europe and america paid that price and they did not forget after they came back from the war: they decided they did not wish to pay again. In face of that the right made concessions and we had a post war concensus during which a compromise system was established under which the super rich maintained a very privileged position but the inequalities were somewhat reduced in order to achieve a better standard for all. The aim of reducing inequality was open and most people understood that it produced better outcomes for most.
That persisted for a couple of generations: but as ever, people take for granted the gains they enjoy and they come to forget how and why those gains were achieved. Naturally enough they stop being grateful for what they have and they start to focus on the imperfections and seek ways to improve their situation. Nothing wrong with that so long as you understand the situation as it was before the changes were made and remember that that situation can re-emerge: people have not changed and their interests have not changed. But people do not remember that, because if you have always had a reasonable life style it is easy to persuade you that this is natural.
It seems to me that this is a cycle: the right retreat when they must and advance when they can: and the rhetoric which underpins the advance changes at each cycle: but the ideology remains the same. In short those who are very rich and powerful genuinely do not have the same interests as most of us.
I agree that the right became resurgent in the Reagan/Thatcher years and that the move towards the current situation has been ruthlessly pursued since that time. This is not surprising. With much greater control of information; and with the ability to exploit cosmetic discontent and to characterise it as evidence of a fundamental flaw in the way things are organised, they can persuade many to misunderstand where their own interests lie. Thatcher was quite open in what she wished to achieve: Victorian values. I do not know if Reagan was so open but in any case they were both mouthpieces for the plutocratic interest and they were personally irrelevant (though I will still dance on her grave). It is no accident that both were rather stupid and rather one dimensional figures. Cometh the hour, cometh the selfish moron.
It is no use saying that the plutocracy has done this to the people: we are complicit, in that we have allowed the limits of debate to be set very narrow; and we have indeed voted for this. The current economic debacle is not an accident: it is an inevitable outcome of these policies. Some of the right do not understand this: but some do, I think. They are exploiting it to further the agenda as well, so the "solution" is more of the same stuff which got us into the mess in the first place.
There is nothing new about the neo-cons, as you rightly say. They are old fashioned laissez faire capitalists: we saw them in the 19th century and we saw them in the 1920's. We see them again in their new emperors clothes, but we do not have the little boy yet.
We better get one soon: because this road leads to war, I fear
