i've talked to left and right wingers in person about this and most seem to agree with this concept or contributed to it. at the vaguest level it's perceived as two groups, the neoliberals/neocons and the populists. the populists have a left (berniecrat, demsoc) and right (trumpian, nazbol-lite) wing. the neos are all the old guard repubs (mitch) and centrist/corporatecrats. at their most basic understanding of this they believe the populists are trying to help the people while the neos only care about the markets. obviously this struggle is being heavily catalyzed by the 2k checks.
Has Cotton ever claimed to be an economic populist? He seems like a standard ghoul (but more racist), and doesn't pretend to be anything else.
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He was an early supporter of the first round of relief checks, I remember around that time people were pointing out that he was outflanking many Democrats on the left economically for that reason.