Reply #5: Everyone needs to read this statement.

[madfloridian]

"What is most striking about the connections between Third Way rhetoric and New Right politics is that where the ideology is most deeply implanted—in the United States and England—social programs have suffered the worst and capitalist class prosperity is greatest."

And here is more about the Third Way and who founded it and who "owns" it.

Who owns the Third Way

The DLC

Privately funded and operating as an extraparty organization without official Democratic sanction, and calling themselves "New Democrats," the DLC sought nothing less than the miraculous: the transubstantiation of America's oldest political party. Though the DLC painted itself using the palette of the liberal left--as "an effort to revive the Democratic Party's progressive tradition," with New Democrats being the "trustees of the real tradition of the Democratic Party"--its mission was far more confrontational.

The Third Way

DLC | The New Democrat | May 1, 1999
Who Owns the Third Way?
By Al From

Opportunity. Responsibility. Community. Those New Democrat themes rang out over and over at an extraordinary, historic forum entitled "The Third Way: Progressive Governance for the 21st Century," hosted by the Democratic Leadership Council on April 25 in Washington after the close of the NATO summit.

The participants were President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Netherlands Prime Minister Wim Kok, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema -- the leading figures of the global Third Way movement.

Progressive political leaders created this movement to deal with new social and political questions posed by economic change and globalization. It seeks to strike a new balance between the imperatives of economic dynamism and social justice.

This politics goes by different names in different countries. It's New Democrat in America, New Labour in Great Britain, and the New Middle in Germany. Whatever its national label, Third Way values, ideas, and approaches to governing are modernizing center-left politics around the globe. The Third Way uses innovative ideas and modern means to advance fundamental progressive principles.

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=127&subid=171&contentid=901