SO MUCH FOR THAT NEWFOUND REPUBLICAN POPULISM

Here's Peggy Noonan on Friday, detecting signs of change in the GOP in a speech at the recent Republican National Committee meeting:

Rep. Dave Camp zeroed in on the worst of Wall Street, the use of derivatives that helped crash the economy in 2008. He proposes to "crack down on the ability of investment firms and wealthy individuals to limit their taxes through complex financial instruments," Roll Call reports. That's a pirate move, and of the best kind because it doesn't come from a pirate but from the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a conservative veteran respected on both sides of the aisle.

These sharp cracks in the air just may be the sound of a frozen party moving on into swift and warmer waters. And if it's just a beginning, good, it's a beginning.

So -- the "frozen party" of fat cats is "moving on into swift and warmer waters" of populism? Really?

No, not really:

Senate Republicans are renewing their vow to block any nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to its structure.

In a letter sent to President Obama on Friday, 43 Republican senators committed to refusing approval of any nominee to head the consumer watchdog....

The party doesn't care about ordinary citizens. Some of its members may claim to be wary of big business, but only in favor of small business. The party's solution to the big guys screwing you is to encourage a whole new crop of little guys to become the new big guys screwing you.

As Noonan puts it, quoting a Ted Cruz speech at the RNC meeting:

Republicans spent 2012 answering President Obama with the slogan "You built that!" But that was a slogan aimed at those who'd already arrived, who were established. The GOP message, [Cruz] said, should have been, "You can build that." The party should not allow itself to look like the party of big business, it has to be the party of the young person in the garage inventing something that will challenge big business.

And then that young person in the garage can shaft the consumer, or despoil the environment, or exploit overseas workers, or all of the above. That's what America is all about! Not finding the right balance between the vaulting ambition of capitalists and the human needs of the vast majority of citizens who'll never be fabulously successful entrepreneurs, but unleashing those ambitious capitalists and letting them do whatever they please.

The only little guy Republicans will ever be champions of in the foreseeable future is the little guy who's got his eyes on being the big guy. If you're not that guy, any concern Republicans express about ordinary citizens is not about you.