Mickey Kaus Joins Tea Party To Demagogue Immigration Reform

The Daily Caller's Mickey Kaus will appear at an August 21 Tea Party meeting to whip up fears that comprehensive immigration reform “would change America irrevocably, and for the worse.”

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The Hancock Park Patriots, a Tea Party group based in Los Angeles, announced Kaus' participation in the event, promising that he would answer the questions “Can they be stopped?” and “What's the alternative?”

Kaus self-identifies as “neoliberal” and “common sense Democrat” but espouses a far-right ideology, including a fixation on union-busting, and his participation in the Hancock Park Patriots meeting makes clear that Kaus is anti-immigrant. The former Slate blogger has become obsessed with the issue, dedicating all but one of his posts in July on his Daily Caller blog to the subject.

Kaus' right-wing ideological alignment is not a recent shift. University of California-Berkeley economist and blogger Brad DeLong laid out Kaus' position on the right in 2007:

A self-proclaimed Democrat who can't figure out in October 2000 that there is even a dime's worth of difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush? A self-proclaimed neoliberal who claims not to know whether Bush's reversal of the real Clinton neoliberals' balancing the budget is “good or bad for the country,” and claims that it is immaterial that the Bushies' policies, like" the Bush tax cut [are] based on lies... it's not enough to criticize a policy to say that it's based on lies"?

Kaus left Slate in 2010 to launch a primary challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) that was doomed from the start. When that failed, Kaus jumped to Newsweek, where he stayed for a few months before stationing himself at The Daily Caller. Kaus recently popped up to theorize that the “sudden spate” of military sexual assaults scandals was designed to “crowd out ” coverage of White House scandals and immigration reform.

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This level of commentary has solidified Kaus' position as the right wing's favorite “good liberal.” Kaus has even struck up a friendship with Ann Coulter, whom he calls a “sensible person.” Coulter reciprocated, referring to Kaus as “the last living liberal intellectual” and praising “the lush analytical detail of a Kausfiles blog posting.”