Walter’s entry on the Florida Senate race calls to mind that one of the ironies of the Democratic Party’s recent insistence on being the lapdog of the litigation lobby is that the latter has no special loyalty to the Democratic Party or anything that it stands for.
The most recent incarnation of this is the anti-abortion but pro-trial-lawyer Astroturf group “Center for a Just Society,” run by Ken Connor, that seeks to turn social conservatives into litigation lobby supporters by arguing that tort reform would threaten the ability of plaintiffs’ lawyers to sue RU-486 out of the market. (Connor comes from the same law firm as Jim Wilkes, who set up another Astroturf group that opposed nursing home liability reform in Florida, where liability had gotten so out of control that even the AARP supported efforts to limit ability of elders to sue nursing homes (Dec. 17, 2003).) Ramesh Ponnuru exposes the fallacies of this group’s reasoning in an article in this week’s National Review (sadly not available on line), which quotes me and mentions Walter. (Ramesh Ponnuru, “Social Injustice: Trial lawyers woo social conservatives”, National Review, Aug. 29).
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