How Elastic Is the Preferential Option for the Poor?

I appreciated Rick's pointer to the "Against the Grain's" post on the preferential option for the poor. It returns us to the argument about whether the Option (or CST in general) pushes us to the left or right on matters of economic policy -- or even our understanding of equality. The post makes the argument that anti-statist, pro-market types (ie, Michael Novak, Fr Sirico, the Acton Institute) are not AGAINST the Option, but that they believe the interests of the poor are better served by the economic policies they favor, than by pro-regulatory, market-constraining, welfarist, redistributionist policies, and, to boot, that those statist policies tend to be violative of human liberty and hence human dignity. In other words, they are merely presenting an argument over means, not ends.  Well, if that is true, of what value is the concept of "the preferential option for the poor," if it is so elastic as to contain such widely disparate economic ideologies? What does the phrase add to how we make choices about economic policies and the legal infrastructure for supporting and expressing them if it can be used so promiscuously? What sense does it make to talk about Michael Novak and a Catholic socialist both being able to invoke the preferential option for the poor?   I tend toward a pragmatism on this question -- whatever works for the poor works. Sometimes the solution is market-based, sometimes it requires government intervention. I am troubled by the reflexive anti-statism of the arguments on the right; it is a categorical hostlity that cuts far too broadly. What distinguishes the Option is its radical insistence upon attention to the poor in policymaking. What mechanism does the market possess that will ensure such attention without the state? I'm not sure that we can simply assume that a rising tide will lift all boats. Wealth creation can be a tsunami or a whirlpool in which many boats will sink.

--Mark