This one weird political fight shows why Republicans are terrible at economic populism

The Export-Import Bank is up for re-authorization at the start of July. You may think this is a rather esoteric event in the grand scheme of things, and you would be right! But the re-authorization is turning into a rather dramatic intra-Republican slug fest, revealing the deep, intractable problems with the GOP's economic platform.

The Ex-Im Bank, as it's colloquially called, is a corporation owned by the U.S. government, tasked with helping American jobs and exports by providing credit and loans to foreign buyers. Thanks to the fees and interest it charges it's actually a net positive for the government's finances. It was created way back in 1934, has enjoyed a default rate of less than 2 percent since, and has been uncontroversial for the vast majority of its time on Earth.

All that changed dramatically in the last few years. The Ex-Im Bank has become a lightning rod in the debate over what conservatives and the GOP stand for. Republican heavy-hitters including Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Jeb Hensarling, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz have all said the bank needs to die.

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Reporter Timothy Carney of The Washington Examiner, one of the bank's most tireless opponents, just called the re-authorization a litmus test of the GOP's free market principles: Will it stand firm and kill the bank, or will it succumb to the temptations of crony capitalism and corporate welfare?

But let's step back for a second. What is "crony capitalism"? Why is it bad? What are free market principles? Why are they good? These may seem like stupidly obvious questions, but the way the Ex-Im Bank fight answers them reveals some subtle but important truths about the impasse conservatives currently face.

Begin with the practical effects. While about 89 percent of the transactions the bank participates in support small businesses, 75 percent of the money it pumps out is distributed among a few very large companies — including aerospace manufacturer Boeing. And if Ex-Im is subsidizing Boeing's exports to foreign airlines, that means those airlines can buy equipment Boeing makes at better financing rates. That gives foreign airlines a leg up when competing with American airlines. In fact, Delta has been pouring support into the campaign to kill the bank for exactly this reason.

So under normal economic conditions, the Ex-Im Bank is just a money shuffler, moving resources to the companies whose exports it subsidizes, and moving them away from companies it ignores — "picking winners and losers" in conservative parlance.

But we're not in normal conditions. The American economy is operating well below capacity and interest rates remain right up against the zero lower bound. Under those conditions, the Ex-Im Bank probably does create more American jobs on net.

That's not a slam dunk argument for saving the Ex-Im Bank; it's doubtful the amount of jobs it creates is that high, and it's an incredibly roundabout way to go about creating them. Plenty of principled people on the left oppose the bank as a silly vestigial policy organ, and Democrats' new-found support for it seems to boil down to opportunistic joy at trolling Republicans and watching them beat each other up.

But the Republicans also have a longstanding problem convincing everyday voters they have their economic interests at heart. So it's just incredibly weird that the GOP and its conservative activists have decided this issue is the test case for settling the party's future path.

Presumably, free market principles are good because they make people's lives better. And crony capitalism is bad, because it damages people's lives in some meaningful way. Carney calls himself a libertarian populist, and populism is understood to be a brand of politics that prizes the interests of everyday people over those of the elite.

But none of that is at stake here. Look again at the battle lines: Boeing versus Delta; the Koch Brothers' political activist network versus the Chamber of Commerce; businesses big and small lining up on both sides of the question. The people who benefit from the Ex-Im Bank's "crony capitalism" are elites, and the people who get the short end of the stick and want it dead are elites, too. (And yes, small businesses owners are also elites when compared to ordinary workers.) The "free market principles" in this case are about how some elites understand their relationship to the government vis-a-vis other elites. This is a purely an intra-elite fight.

Americans care about whether there are enough jobs for everyone, whether those jobs pay well and provide security, and whether they'll be helped by other sources when those institutions fail. It's doubtful they much care whether those jobs came from Boeing or Delta, or whether Delta and Boeing feel they're on a "level playing field."

There is a huge range of issues on which policymakers could offer solutions and aid, such as extending access to health care, combating stagnant wages, and creating jobs. But these are all also areas where conservative ideology prevents Republicans from offering any policies that actually address the struggles of everyday workers.

Rather than being a sign the GOP may finally figure out a way to meet that need, the Ex-Im Bank fight is a sign it almost certainly won't. Because crony capitalism in this fight is a purely abstract offense, and free market principles are a purely abstract goal. It's not a battle to make our economy actually improve human welfare. It's a battle to make our economy cohere more closely with some set of free-floating aesthetic preferences. It treats capitalism as a sport, and the Ex-Im Bank's opponents are pissed because they think the refs aren't playing fair.

What's depressing about all this isn't that the bank's conservative detractors are wrong. It's that it just doesn't matter. And the GOP has landed on this pointless kerfuffle because the other values it already adheres to — which both sides of the Ex-Im divide agree on — have left it no where else to go.