As congressional coronavirus relief negotiations headed into a final December stretch, direct stimulus payments to the public looked to be on the cutting room floor. That’s when a mostly unsurprising group spoke up. New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders both pressed for inclusion of the checks, as did the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Liberal leaders complaining a bill doesn’t spend enough? Dog bites man. But this time, the liberals were reinforced by an unlikely ally: a Republican senator. Missouri’s Josh Hawley demanded the inclusion of stimulus checks, saying he would “gladly” work with Ocasio-Cortez on the task. Hawley teamed up with Sanders to sponsor legislation that would provide those checks. While they couldn’t lasso the $1,200 checks they asked for, they did get $600 per adult and dependent child. “Whenever you strike a bipartisan agreement, or form any coalition that has odd bedfellows, all you really want is to be able to count on a person’s word and trust that when they say they'll do something or be for something, you can take it to the bank,” Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sanders who was involved in building a relationship between the two, told me. “Sen. Hawley did exactly that in the fight for direct payments.” The Missouri senator’s intervention in the relief bill fight may have surprised the many who have come to associate the Republican Party with the...