Basically, immigration reform is dead—or at least very close to it. That’s one of the commentariat’s main takeaways from the shocking loss of Rep. Eric Cantor (R) of Virginia to grassroots challenger Dave Brat—an economics professor and political unknown, who a week ago had been polling up to 34 points down in the polls.
Rep. Cantor, a supporter of a Republican version of the DREAM Act, which would have granted the children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship in some situations, was seen as a key link in any bipartisan efforts to push through an immigration overhaul in the 112th Congress. With the severance of this link—and its replacement by a candidate who ran and won on an anti-amnesty, ultraconservative immigration platform—the chances of these efforts succeeding have gone from slim to practically none.
For Democrats, this reality has soured the otherwise delicious schadenfreude that comes with an improbable takedown of a GOP leader. But in terms of policy, the replacement of Cantor with Brat isn’t all that bad for the left.
Rather, Brat, far from an orthodox Tea Partier, has an unusual anti-corporate, anti-big business populism that stands out in an era when the GOP has become enamored of unfettered neoliberalism. Go to Brat’s campaign website, and you’ll read of the “special moneyed interests” that have “corrupted the democratic system.” Analyze his rhetoric and you’ll see it littered with animus toward Big Finance. (At one representative Tea Party meeting last month in Mechanicsville, Va., he said, “All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail,” and the incarceration of Wall Street executives has been a recurring talking point of his.)
On the issues, Brat has attacked Cantor for watering down the STOCK Act of 2012—an attempt to tighten up insider-trading rules and add transparency to the financial lobbying process. He’s also lambasted the majority leader for cozying up to the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—massive pro-corporate lobbying giants typically supported by Tea Party politicians.
Yes, he’s a Tea Party populist, but crucial parts of his populism are of the Zuccotti Park strain, rather than the Rand Paul-Ted Cruz variety.
“Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership do not know what a free market is at all, and the clearest evidence of that is the financial crisis,” Brat said to radio host Flint Engelman in May. “When I say free markets, I mean no favoritism to K Street lobbyists.”
If we look at the majority leader’s backers, Cantor certainly is a corporate congressman. A former member of the House Banking Committee, he received $1.4 million dollars in donations from the financial services industry this election cycle according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. And his three biggest donors, as of January 1, when the last FEC records were made public, were the Blackstone Group, Scroggin Capital, and Goldman Sachs.
For DREAMers, these matters are of (relatively) little import. But for many Democrats, the blow to immigration reform comes with a thick silver lining—and a pretty satisfying middle finger to Wall Street.
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