RUSH: South Jersey, this is Rich. I’m glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Little — little — little —
CALLER: What?
RUSH: I’m hurting here. I’ll get over it, but a very painful thing that I just did.
CALLER: All right. Here’s my point.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I don’t want people to forget about tort reform, because I think it really messed up the medical industry because of the inflated settlements. And —
RUSH: Hey, let me tell you —
CALLER: Look what it’s doing to the foreign surveillance program.
RUSH: Exactly right. They talked about this in great detail yesterday. All of these —
CALLER: Now, one thing let me just say this.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Because if you do fix the tort reform, you’re going to reduce the weight of the lawyer lobby. That’s automatic, don’t you think?
RUSH: Yeah, except lawyers make the laws. Most members of Congress are lawyers or related to them.
CALLER: Well, I’m talking, if you get the right judges in there —
RUSH: Well, guess who the lawyers are?
CALLER: — no point for that.
RUSH: Can I give you the dirty little secret? Many judges are former trial lawyers who have been elected by trial lawyers in various cities, towns, and communities for the express purpose of siding with the trial lawyer community.
RUSH: I’ll ask him.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing) that was a good one.
CALLER: He probably heard this, so maybe he’ll say it.
RUSH: I don’t know where he is. I’m going to have to guess. My instinctive answer to you will be that he has expressed dissatisfaction with the tort lawyer situation and these outrageous settlements and claims and so forth. That’d be my guess, since he claims to be a budget hawk.
CALLER: I think if that gets fixed, I think a lot of problems will just fix themselves.
RUSH: Well, a lot of people agree with you, and I would not be one. I have a friend who’s a tort lawyer. I met him at a Michael Irvin charity golf tournament. This guy, he is unabashed and very proud. He votes Democrat, contributes to Democrats. He’ll vote Republicans if they want to punish corporations — and he came by, brought me a Christmas present back in December. He brought me a box of cigars, and he was complaining his business was down. His tort lawyer business was down. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I need movement! I need movement in my business, and nobody is moving because the gas price is too high. I need accidents! I need broken legs. I need whiplash. I need destroyed front ends of automobiles. I need it, and I’m not getting it. It’s been a bad Christmas.’ (interruption) Okay, yeah. My instincts are right on this. We just checked this. The Club for Growth — which is not a big McCain supporter, by the way — says that his ‘record on tort reform,’ Rich, ‘is generally positive.’ So if that’s what it would take to get you to vote for Senator McCain, then go to the Club for Growth website. Just Google, enter Club for Growth, find it, and search for what they said about tort reform; what they think McCain said what his positions are, and I think you’ll be genuinely satisfied with that. That’s indeed what my instincts were. So, Rich, thanks much for the call. I appreciate it. I don’t think… His point was, aren’t lawsuits the real problem? If we get a handle on that, won’t a lot of things come into line? In one area of the culture, yeah, but there’s far more than that that has to be attacked. Just liberalism pure and simple, in the education business. You people know this. You know the drill.