That’s why he has a unique niche in American journalism: He’s a liberal who relentlessly argues against tolerating illegal immigration or “comprehensive immigration reform” on the grounds that the last thing a nation beset by income inequality needs is a flood of inexpensive, low-skilled laborers.

This has led him to focus on House Republican leaders’ interest in “comprehensive immigration reform.” Here’s an example excoriating House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a secret champion of amnesty.

Overnight lots of folks began crediting Kaus for helping obscure econ prof Dave Brat beat Cantor on Tuesday in a Virgina GOP congressional primary and for suggesting it was a real possibility when the conventional wisdom was that the powerful Cantor would cruise to a lopsided win. CNN’s Jake Tapper called him “Kaustrodamus.”

Brat against crony capitalism and bailouts

Kaus likes Brat for his economic populism.

“Notes: 1) This is a pitch — against a ‘low wage agenda’ and ‘crony corporate lobby’ — that can appeal to Democrats as well as Republicans. Maybe partisanship will eventually be transcended, not at the top, with David Brooks, Gloria Borger and Jon Huntsman imposing a Beltway consensus they hammer out at an Atlantic panel, but at the bottom, where less sleek figures like Brat, Phyllis Schlafly and Jeff Sessions, can make common cause with Democratic workers who’ve gotten the short end of previous top-down triumphs such as global trade and Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, as well as of ineluctable technological trends like automation. 2) Perhaps not coincidentally, Democrats can vote in the Cantor vs. Brat primary. …

“Backfill: See also this earlier Brat release, which expands the potentially bipartisan anti-corporate agenda to other issues – like spending, debt and insider trading.”

Will Brat’s stunning victory presage a national populist uprising?

The National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who seems liberated since he stopped being AP’s Washington D.C. bureau chief, thinks it’s possible.

One way or the other, Cantor’s loss shows there’s no such thing as a safe House seat anymore.

Whether you support the status quo, the proposals from President Obama or President George W. Bush, or a crackdown on those living in the U.S. illegally, there are many reasons to take the issue very seriously, and to try to think through the implications of the decisions our elected leaders make and voters make through initiatives.

But not if you are the reporter covering immigration for the nation's most influential publication. She's pursuing a crusade, not attempting to explore a very complex issue.

“The campaign to win amnesty for illegal immigrants is 'a very substantial civil rights movement,' according to New York Times reporter Julia Preston, who, along with other progressive journalists, spoke about the issue to a Washington, D.C. audience on Friday.

“Preston is the New York Times’ primary immigration reporter — and the paper is cheering the push by progressives and employers to grant amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants during an extended recession. The Gray Lady also backs the simultaneous campaign to double legal immigration, which would bring in 22 million additional immigrant workers and consumers by 2023.

“But, warned Preston, a 'popular resistance out in the country' has sprung up to oppose amnesty.

“A major part of her job is exposing and tracking the resistance, she said.

“'I have to write about… Where is the resistance? How strong is it? Is a popular resistance in this cycle or is it more of a political/ideological resistance?' she said.”

They have a 'civil right' to be in America

That's from Neil Munro of the Daily Caller. The next time someone tells you there's no liberal bias in the media, feel free to laugh until you break a rib.

What's amazing about the illegal immigration debate is that the same people who advocate amnesty of various kinds are often the same people who worry about income inequality. Incredibly enough, about the only journalist who ever regularly points out these issues are inextricably linked is quirky Los Angeles Democrat Mickey Kaus. Here's an example.

Mickey's thesis: Millions of Americans without college degrees struggle to find decent work, raise their kids and pay the bills. So what do American politicians and mainstream media want to do to change this picture? Make job prospects for these millions of Americans even more problematic by legally adding millions more low-skilled workers to the jobs market.

Kaus is onto something when he points out the contempt/indifference the elite media have for struggling poor people — or at least the ones who are citizens.

I am not remotely against increased legal immigration. I would be all for bringing in millions of well-educated, high-achieving new citizens — from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, everywhere — through a merit-driven immigration system like Canada. But that's not what we're contemplating.

By Chris Reed

One of the most striking things about the debate over changing our immigration laws is the refusal to have a real discussion about what would happen to existing citizens with relatively few job skills if we allowed millions more unskilled people to become citizens. It’s striking that for much of his career as a union organizer, including when he was on the cover of TIME at right, Cesar Chavez was a strong critic of illegal immigration because he feared the negative effects on farm workers who were already here.

This should be a social justice issue with the left, one would think. But except in the blogging and columns of Los Angeles Democrat Mickey Kaus, this pretty much never comes up. That’s why it is so surprising, and welcome, to see a liberal writer, T.A. Frank of The New Republic, make this point, explaining how he started out with the standard views that “decent people” are supposed to have on immigration before his life experiences and growing familiarity with the history of immigration led him to a different conclusion:

‘Immense blow to America’s working class, poor’

“All in all, I became convinced that high levels of low-skill immigration are good for wealthy Americans and bad for poor Americans.  Far more important, high levels of illegal immigration—when you start to get into the millions, as we have—undermines unions and labor standards, lowers wages, heightens social tensions, strains state budgets, widens income inequality, subverts the rule of law, and exacerbates class divides. The effects go far beyond wages, because few undocumented workers earn enough to cover anything close to the cost of government services (such as education for their children) they require, and those services are most important to low-income Americans. In short, it’s an immense blow to America’s working class and poor. …

“… a lot of Democrats have also convinced themselves that even if there’s a wage loss to low-skilled workers, the massive new voting bloc of mostly left-leaning immigrants will ultimately help the little guy. But if millions of new Democratic voters oppose strict immigration control, then there will no Democratic support for meaningful immigration control. And generous social benefits cannot coexist with an open border.  (Nor can a more egalitarian society.)”

Good for Frank. He’s actually willing to think through the implications of what will happen if the House adopts legislation similar to what the Senate passed Thursday.

Unfortunately, we can’t have a real debate about this because skeptics of immigration reform, as Frank notes, are not considered to be “decent people.” But such skeptics aren’t all nativists by any means. Some of them are realists. And some of these realists think hurting the job prospects of existing low-skill Americans isn’t the right thing to do.

By Chris Reed

Mickey Kaus, the Los Angeles journalist and author who ran against Sen. Barbara Boxer in the 2010 Democratic primary, has emerged as the sharpest critic of the immigration overhaul expected to emerge this week in the U.S. Senate:

“Rubio repeatedly said it would be ‘cheaper, faster and easier’ for illegal immigrants to go back home, wait 10 years, and apply for a green card (under current law) than to go through the longer ‘alternative’ green card path created by his amnesty bill. That’s absurd. If Rubio’s bill passes, how many illegal immigrants are going to go home and wait 10 years versus accepting the bill’s more-or-less immediate legalization and then waiting to get their green cards?  The answer is a number approaching zero. Why? Because under Rubio’s bill they will get to do the waiting while living and working legally in the United States. That’s certainly easier than ‘self-deporting’ for ten years under current law.”

Kaus opposes legalizing the illegal immigrants in this nation not on Pat Buchanan nativist grounds, or on the grounds that they shouldn’t be rewarded for breaking the law. Instead, the author of “The End of Equality” primarily objects to legalization because of the negative effects it would have on adult Americans with few job skills. It’s an interesting take and one that not many Democrats share.

Republicans, of course, have their own dilemma with immigration. But Kaus believes Democrats should do some soul-searching as well on the topic.