If Liz Warren is such an economic populist, why is she cool with Ex-Im?

Jonah Goldberg at NRO says that Heritage Action, in what really is a rather clever move, recently invited Warren to a confab on how to phase out the Export-Import Bank.  Herpeople declined the gesture, to no one's surprise:

Since Warren is the dashboard saint of left-wing populism these days, denouncing big business and Wall Street at every turn, the puckish policy pixies at Heritage Action thought they could enlist her in their cause. As first reported by Bloomberg News, Heritage sent Warren a letter asking her to speak against Ex-Im “and the political favoritism it engenders.”

“We, like you, are frustrated with a political economy that benefits well-connected elites at the expense of all Americans,” Michael Needham, the head of Heritage Action, wrote. “Your presence will send a clear signal that you are going to fight the most pressing example of corporate welfare and cronyism pending before Congress right now.”

Warren didn’t take the bait. Her spokeswoman told Bloomberg, “Senator Warren believes that the Export-Import Bank helps create American jobs and spur economic growth, but recognizes that there is room for improvement in the bank’s operations.”

Warren’s decision to turn down the invitation sparked numerous charges of hypocrisy from Ex-Im opponents. As one writer for Reason magazine put it, “That’s right: The woman best known for demonizing big businesses nevertheless wants to maintain an outlandishly generous subsidy package for them.”

Goldberg says that the reason the Left simultaneously bashes "big business" while cozying up to it on a bureaucratic level is that that is the means by which it can keep big biz on a leash.

David Harsanyi at The Federalist says that it is this kind of managerial-class incestuousness that proves that Warren is no kind of figure distinct from what the H-Word Creature represents, and therefore does not present the kind of viable alternative to H's left that some folks are speculating about:

Even the most appealing aspect of Warren’s politics, her alleged commitment to weakening Wall Street’s influence over Washington, is a fraud. People were surprised when she offered to support the corporate welfare Export-Import Bank last week. On the surface this looked like hypocrisy. We sometimes confuse those who try to restrict and control markets with those who have genuine anxieties about crony capitalism. It’s similar to the way we often confuse the coddling of rent-seeking corporations with “capitalism.”

So it’s worth noting that Warren was appointed chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP. Most of her focus, then and later, was on how we spend bailout funds, not if we should spend them. Warren’s anti-cronyism is incidental; a byproduct of a Progressive political agenda that supports the funneling of nearly all serious economic choices (from mortgages to energy policy to health care) through Washington—the kind of policy that breeds the unhealthy relationships she claims to abhor. The “system is rigged,” Warren likes to say. And maybe she’s right. She just wants to rig it her way. Warren doesn’t have a problem with big banks or corporations. She has a problem with banks and corporations that make profits in ways that she finds morally intolerable. She is an opponent of dynamism, not cronyism.

After all, she's a politician, which means she needs campaign funds, and, as we well know, the money has to come from somewhere.