Bolsonaro recreates Labor Ministry for all the wrong reasons

From the beginning, the Jair Bolsonaro administration has been an ideological patchwork. At first, power was split between rural elites, Army generals, ultralibertarian economists, and ideological zealots. 

Since then, however, center-right parties in Congress have taken over the government, stealing power from the libertarian wing and fighting with military advisors for prominence. Many of the zealots were cast aside in scandal, as was the case of a short-lived culture secretary who paraphrased Joseph Goebbels during an address to the nation. But one person within this group has remained in Mr. Bolsonaro’s good books for his entire term: Brazil’s new Labor Minister, Onyx Lorenzoni.

The congressman from Rio Grande do Sul has spent his entire political career as a quintessential member of the House’s so-called “lower clergy.” The term is used to describe members of Congress who never manage to get close to power — the same could have been said about Jair Bolsonaro until he was elected president in 2018.

As colleagues in the lower clergy, it was Mr. Lorenzoni who first embraced the idea of Mr. Bolsonaro running for president. Even though his own right-wing Democratas (DEM) party was on the ticket, Mr. Lorenzoni broke ranks and threw his support behind the eventual winner, at a time most pundits dismissed Jair Bolsonaro as little more than...