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.

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.