I’m kind of thinking that John Edwards must be scary to Republicans. One big issue for Republicans in general and our current President in particular is tort reform. I read a good article reprinted from Washington Monthly about John Edwards’ campaign being a great platform from which to oppose tort reform. Because John Edwards is the very prototype of the crusading attorney who fights for the bedraggled masses, he’s the perfect person to argue that tort reform would be a mistake. Now I see that the National Review Online is warning other Democratic Presidential candidates against taking John Edwards too lightly. Seems to me that the only reason the NRO would be dispensing advice to Democrats is that they’d much prefer to see Bush run against a Lieberman, Kerry, or Gephart in 2004 for than against John Edwards. The candidate who has most captured my interest is Howard Dean, but I’d prefer Edwards as opposed to any of the others I just mentioned.

On the subject of tort reform, I’m against it for the most part. I hate frivolous lawsuits, but I haven’t seen any proposals for tort reform that would cut down on frivolous cases without also damaging the ability of people with meritous cases to bring lawsuits.