Six months ago discussing Perry’s possible candidacy, a top conservative leader privately said, “Rick is a great leader. But he’s not a greater debater. And he knows it. The question would be whether he overcomes it.”

Technology regularly creates new challenges for presidents. Debating skill was a non-issue for many consequential presidents, but some are trying to make it an automatic disqualifier for the Texas governor.

America’s third president—Thomas Jefferson—was a lousy public speaker. He was literally a genius, and his singular eloquence as a writer is seen in his prose in the Declaration of Independence and other writings.

But Jefferson was no speaker, so much so that he only gave a couple speeches in his entire two-term presidency. He was so bad that he fulfilled his constitutional requirement to give an annual State of the Union by sending a written document to Congress.

The media would pan Jefferson’s radio and television performance today. Does America regret electing such a lackluster orator?

In 1932 this country elected a president who sounded great on radio, but would have been a disaster on television.

In the 1995 movie The American President, President Andrew Sheppard (played by Michael Douglas) is complaining to his chief of staff A.J. MacInerny (played by Martin Sheen) about his unfair treatment in the press.

MacInerny responded to the president, “You’ve said it yourself a million times. If there had been a TV in every living room sixty years ago, this country does not elect a man in a wheelchair.”

While many disagree with FDR’s policy goals (and his judicial appointments), no one questions his historic impact. He established aggressive goals based on his principles, and changed the nation by rallying public support behind them.

But as a matter of political reality, Sheppard and MacInerny are probably right. If cameras caught FDR being wheeled onto a debate stage as an invalid, FDR would have been a zero-term non-president instead of a four-term president.

This media obsession with the cosmetics of Perry’s presentation willfully ignores the substance of his agenda. Perry’s proposals on fundamental overhauls on tax reform, energy, healthcare, and re-empowering the states through federalism could make him a transformational president if he enacts them.

These proposals arise from a massive public record. An Air Force captain, Perry is the only major candidate with military experience. And his subsequent quarter-century of elected office includes a decade as governor enacting tort reform, education reform, and business-friendly policies.

But some establishment figures will have none of it. It’s okay to support the Second Amendment, but not if you shoot a coyote threatening your daughter’s dog. It’s okay to have faith, but not to support a public day of prayer. It’s okay to tinker with the tax code, but not to propose replacing our dysfunctional federal tax system with a flat tax.

Hostility to Perry is in large part driven by the same factors that drove opposition to other candidates in recent elections, such as the affable Mike Huckabee. Perry is a conservative Evangelical Christian, and although he never plays the victim, a cursory Google search reveals how many media commentators cannot tolerate his conservatism and his faith.

Nor is Perry alone. Other conservative candidates of faith are attacked when they break into the top tier. And as with Huckabee—who was another longtime Southern state governor—media elites ignore Perry’s charisma and connection with audiences.

Perry is a strong and effective leader. He has a quarter-century of executive experience under his belt, including three terms as governor of America’s second-largest state. And though not a great debater, he gives rousing plain-spoken speeches that receive standing ovations and connect with ordinarily Americans.

Republicans wanting a good debater should vote for someone else in the primaries. Or they can just wait until next November, and vote for Obama.

Because America voted for silver-tongued eloquence and sparkling debate performances in 2008. How’s that working out for you?

Conservatives cannot allow Republican lawmakers to soften or defect on the party’s fundamental principles, or worse, align with those who are diametrically opposed to everything the GOP stands for:  free enterprise, reasonable taxes, limited government and tort reform. Yes, tort reform — and here’s why.

Ignoring tort reform has been devastating to taxpayers, the economy and American business. The U.S. is the most litigious nation in the world; it weakens us competitively and lessens respect for America’s legal system in the eyes of the world. The question isn’t how this critical issue fell from our sightlines to the sidelines. The question is: Why have we permitted trial lawyers to worm their way into our ranks to undermine GOP priorities and the party itself?

In state capitols across the country, there are legislators who proclaim to be conservatives yet block lawsuit reform. A look at just a few states quickly reveals several examples of Republicans who align with personal injury lawyers.

In North Carolina, the legislature recently passed a medical malpractice bill that would allow patients to recover full medical expenses and lost wages and up to $500,000 for noneconomic damages. The bill passed with bipartisan support, yet Republican Representatives N. Leo Daughtry and Grey Mills couldn’t deliver a “yea” vote. Could it be because they both received campaign donations from the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers? Or is it because they are both trial lawyers who have themselves settled millions of dollars in personal injury awards?

Pennsylvania has the dishonor of representation by Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Stewart Greenleaf, who has been a more reliable vote for the trial bar than for tort reform. He has used his powerful committee chairmanship to bottle up, gut and otherwise sabotage efforts to pass meaningful reform. This year he nearly succeeded again when he maneuvered to upend the “Fair Share Act,” a bill to stop the abhorrent practice of targeting defendants based on the depth of their pockets rather than the extent of their liability, with language so watered down as to render the bill useless. Luckily, this gift to the trial bar was exposed and principled Republicans passed real reform.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, the consummate executive and a rising star of the GOP, rode the call for reform to victory. So far, he’s lived up to every word, working hard to bring the state budget back from the verge of collapse. Yet in his own backyard, Republican Assemblyman Jon Bramnick, the Republican Conference leader, boasts about raking in millions of dollars in personal injury damages.

Not surprisingly, Bramnick has been no friend of reform in the Democrat-controlled legislature where reform needs every friend it can get. Instead of rallying around the cause, Bramnick in the past has sponsored wrongful death legislation, a top trial lawyer priority that would have vastly expanded lawsuits and damage awards. Governor Christie should ask Bramnick if he can count on his vote when the governor turns his attention to cleaning up New Jersey’s tort laws, and if not, Governor Christie should campaign against him.

The damage doesn’t stop at undercutting the Republican Party’s policy agenda. One has to consider whether the same allegiances that led these Republicans to work against tort reform have a more insidious effect of aiding and abetting the top funding source of the Democratic Party – trial lawyers. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the American Association for Justice contributed over $2.8 million in 2010; of that amount only $71,000 (2.5%) went to Republicans.

When Republican lawmakers allow more lawsuit bounty for greedy trial lawyers, they put more money in the campaign war chest of the opposition party. They might as well write a check to the Democratic National Committee to defeat good Republicans.

In infiltrating our ranks, the trial bar is creating political sleeper cells that work to the detriment of Republican party goals. The wake-up call isn’t that the trial bar is doing this, it’s that Republicans are letting it happen. It’s time to take a hard look at those in the Republican ranks who choose trial lawyers over conservative principle.

America’s trial lawyers are getting ready to make the case against one of their biggest targets in years: Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Among litigators, there is no presidential candidate who inspires the same level of hatred – and fear – as Perry, an avowed opponent of the plaintiffs’ bar who has presided over several rounds of tort reform as governor.

And if Perry ends up as the Republican nominee for president, deep-pocketed trial lawyers intend to play a central role in the campaign to defeat him.

That’s a potential financial boon to a president who has unsettled trial lawyers with his own rhetorical gestures in the direction of tort reform. A general election pitting Barack Obama against Perry could turn otherwise apathetic trial lawyers into a phalanx of pro-Obama bundlers and super PAC donors.

“If this guy emerges, if he’s a serious candidate, if he doesn’t blow up in the next couple weeks, it’s going to motivate many in the plaintiffs’ bar to dig deeper to support President Obama,” said Sean Coffey, a former securities litigator who ran for attorney general of New York last year. “That will end up driving a lot of money to the Democratic side.”

Some attorneys don’t intend to wait and see how Perry fares in the GOP primaries.

Democratic Houston trial lawyer Steve Mostyn – who, along with his wife, Amber, donated nearly $9 million to Texas candidates and party committees in the 2010 cycle – said he’s in the process of forming “some federal PACs” to take on Perry. That will likely include a federal super PAC that could take in the kind of massive donations that are permitted in Texas.

Read the whole thing here. Considering that Politico is the go-to trade rag of the Democrat party, the moves of the trial bar shouldn’t be seen as a bluff.

On Tuesday the Texas Senate, under the leadership of Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and despite an aggressive lobbying effort by the Trial Lobby, voted unanimously in favor of “loser pays” tort reform legislation. On Wednesday, the House, which had passed a similar bill and was awaiting the Senate’s version, concurred with the Senate bill and passed it through. Gov. Rick Perry has said he will enthusiastically sign the bill into law.

‘Loser pays’ will require plaintiff’s to foot the bill of the winning party’s legal costs if a judge finds the case to be groundless. According to the Wall Street Journal, “This Texas upgrade would build on reforms in 2003 and 2005 that have vastly improved the legal climate in what has not coincidentally become the country’s best state for job creation.”

Negotiations on the bill were highly contentious in recent weeks, mostly due to a well-funded lobbying campaign by the Trial Lobby, which, in Texas, is virtually synonymous with the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, there was a breakthrough over the weekend.

From the Austin Statesman:

By a unanimous vote, the Texas Senate has just given final approval to a once-controversial “loser pays” bill designed to make it easier to get meritless lawsuits tossed out of court.

Passage of the measure had been one of the goals of Gov. Rick Perry and GOP conservative groups. But as recently as a week ago, approval of the new law remained in doubt, as various groups continued to battle over its provisions.

Then, after several days of closed-door talks, a surprise deal was announced Saturday on House Bill 274 that allowed for today’s vote.

Gov. Perry and Lt. Gov. Dewhurst deserve credit for shepherding the measure through negotiations. They serve as an example to Governors Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, each of who was elected on a pledge to institute similar reforms in their respective states. Americans for Job Security also stood up to the Trial Lobby’s largess with radio ads and a public information campaign.

“Thanks to the principled leadership of Gov. Perry and Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, a strong tort reform bill has emerged from the Senate,” said Stephen DeMaura, president of Americans for Job Security. “This important legislation would be a boost to Texas’s economy, freeing small business owners from the threat of frivolous lawsuits and securing the Lone Star State’s status as a magnet to job creators.”

Properly understood, Gov. Perry’s aggressive reforms should be classified along with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s and New Jersey Governor Christ Christie’s union and budget reforms. In Texas, Perry is confronting a powerful pillar of the Democrat establishment – the Trial Lobby spent nearly $14 million to defeat Perry last year – just as Walker and Christie are attempting to do with Big Labor. It’s why these men have been successful to date, hold the promise of future success and remain exceedingly popular within the Republican Party. It is also terrific policy designed to create a pro-jobs, pro-growth economic environment. The nation’s other governors should take note.

That all changed when the state enacted pioneering tort reform laws in 2003 and 2005 that overhauled much of the state’s legal system, with a focus on areas that act as magnets for low-merit litigation, such as class-action certification, product liability, and medical malpractice.  The new law also put a cap of $250,000 on non-economic damages, vastly reducing the average size of lawsuits.  The result?  In just a few years, Texas has become first in the nation in job creation, and seen the number of doctors applying for license to practice rise by 60 percent.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is not content to stop there; the popular Republican and current RGA Chairman devoted a portion of his most recent State of the State address to promoting adoption of a ‘loser pays’ rule, which requires plaintiffs to pick up the tab for defendants’ legal fees if their suits are judged to be groundless.   Sometimes called the ‘English Law’ due to its origin in England, loser pays laws are in place in the legal systems of nearly every developed nation besides the U.S.  Incidentally, the U.S. is home to the world’s most complicated and costly legal system by far.  The Wall Street Journal reports that Americans now spend more per year on tort litigation than on new cars, with the total tort tab reaching $247 billion in 2006.  Coincidence?  Probably not – loser pays measures are known to clear the legal system of nuisance litigation, act as a deterrent against low-merit class action suits, lower overall litigation costs, and create a more expedient path to justice for meritorious claims.

The Texas House handed Perry a victory this month, handily passing their version of the loser-pays legislation.  Now, the tort reform battle looms in the State Senate, where their version of the loser-pays bill is in committee.  Lt. Gov. – and likely U.S. Senate candidate – David Dewhurst will be pitted against Texas Trial Lawyer honcho President Steve Mostyn, a sort of King of the Ambulance Chasers.  Mostyn has amassed a large personal fortune by obtaining jackpot settlements from the state in hurricane-related lawsuits, and coughed up almost $6 million (nearly half of what the trial lawyers spent in total) to defeat Perry and other pro-tort reformRepublicans in 2010.  Perry has made it clear he will sign any loser pays bill that crosses his desk, so the spotlight is on Dewhurst to play the rainmaker.

With a Republican majority in the Senate, passing the loser pays bill should be a no-brainer, but the trial lawyers will fight to the last man – or dollar – to stop it, and while their influence may be more limited than in times past, their wallet isn’t.    In Texas, the Lt. Governor also acts as the head of the Senate, so Dewhurst is tasked with ensuring that Perry’s pet legislation makes the cut.  While he has postponed making an official announcement about his candidacy for higher office until next month, Dewhurst is the clear front-runner for retiring U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s seat.  As the legislative session nears a close and the 2012 campaign season heats up, this is a key moment for Dewhurst as he has a chance to flex his political muscles and prove that he – not the trial lawyers – runs the Texas Senate.

With several Republican challengers already in the race, Dewhurst needs to be able to run on a strong record, and align himself with the popular Perry.  Already under fire for his handling of the budget process, it would be a major source of ammunition for primary challengers if he were seen as having dropped the ball on a key piece of the Republican agenda.  On the flip side, being able to tout his successful shepherding of what is surely to be a national model for tort reforms would be a huge bonus in the primary.

Not to mention, it would be a really good thing for small businesses and doctors, and a really bad thing for the trial lawyers lobby.

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the Black Friday sales figures, the policy wishes of America’s CEOs and Brazil’s booming inflation.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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The CEOs’ Top Priorities
TNL: Brazil Gets Ireland’s Disease

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Staring disaster in the face on Tuesday, Democrats are running scared. And some are even running as Republicans.

Thomas Kilbride is running to be “retained” as a State Supreme Court Justice in Illinois. He needs 60% of voters in the 3rd District, which comprises a band across the middle of Illinois from the Mississippi River to Indiana, to re-elect him.

Kilbride is a Democrat, according to Wikipedia’s State Supreme Court page for Illinois, and received $600,000 from the Democratic party in 2000 when he first ran. But Republicans and conservatives in his District will be forgiven for being confused about that, because they’ve recently been bombarded with campaign flyers indicating Kilbride is a Republican.

Here’s the front and back of that flyer, which Illinois Review originally posted.

Kilbride needs the conservatives in his district, who are already energized to vote against the Obama-Pelosi-Reid big-government agenda, to think he’s a Republican and therefore not vote him out of the Supreme Court.  That’s why he puts a big fat Republican elephant on the front of his flyer, which is titled “Election Alert for Republicans.”

Thus, we discover just how desperate Democrats are to retain power this year.

Normally, we’d chalk that up to smart, albeit dirty, Illinois politics. But Kilbride has taken this a step further by telling voters he is a Republican, when he’s not. That’s fraud. Moreover, on the back side of the flyer proclaiming his conservative values, he uses “we” 9 times and “our values” 4 times, further cementing in voters’ minds that he is something he is not: a conservative Republican.

The only not-astonishing thing about this story is where Kilbride is getting all the money for this. Kilbride has raised $2.4 million to save his job from the standard liberal groups: “House Speaker Michael Madigan and organized labor,” says the Chicago Tribune.

Madigan, by the way, makes Nancy Pelosi look like a nursery rhyme when it comes to controlling the Illinois House. Speaker Madigan directed the Illinois Democratic Party to give Kilbride $1.42 million. The Illinois Federation of Teachers has pitched in with almost half a million bucks as well. Check out all of Kilbride’s 2010 donations here:

Kilbride Contribution Analysis 2010

Why is Illinois’ version of Nancy Pelosi on steroids giving all this money to Kilbride?

The Chicago Tribune nails it:

“Why would Madigan put so much money in a judicial election when he’s also trying to save his members in the House? Precisely because he wants to save his members in the House — for the next decade. The legislature will soon draw new districts. The Supreme Court will rule on that map. In effect, the court will decide which party holds the upper hand in the House and Senate for the next 10 years. In 2001, Kilbride joined other Democrats on the court to uphold the map drawn by Democrats. Every Republican on the court voted against that map.”