Daily Ramblings:
The Frist One Now Will Later Be Last ...07/31/2005 10:49:14 pm
It's true; the prospect of using the above title made this post inevitable. Nevertheless, there's a couple of things to say about Senator Frist's change of heart on the issue of embryonic stem cell research (still consistently shortened in the mainstream media to just "stem cell research," which is of-course a non-controversial area of study, where it involves adult or umbilical cord blood cells).
Firstly, (or fristly) before criticizing the Senator's move, one should arrive at some conclusion over his motives for it. Was it a principled act, borne from the Senator's own understanding of medical science (as he keeps reminding us he that he is a doctor)? Or was it an act of political opportunism, with an eye towards the 2008 presidential contest? That is, perhaps an attempt to compete on the same "moderate" ground as someone like John McCain, known unaffectionately in conservative circles as "the New York Times' favorite Republican."
Well, I think we have the answer here, in the fact that Frist leaked his planned speech to none other than the New York Times the day before he gave it - and apparently before he even gave President Bush a heads-up.
Frist knows that John McCain is a formidable candidate whom he is likely to face in the presidential primaries. I think he has made the calculation that he cannot afford to cede the perceived "moderate" ground to Senator McCain. This is his first major attempt to compete on that ground. And it apparently has paid some dividends - as Saturday's glowing editorial in the New York Times attests.
Frist is also likely calculating that it would be of benefit to him in any ultimate general election. As Arlen Specter (that truly awe-inspiring intellect of the U.S. Senate) said today:
"Republicans want to nominate somebody who can be re-elected. And I think the way the matter is pending now, I don't think a presidential candidate opposed to stem cells could be elected."
Thanks, Arlen, for also leaving out the word "embryonic," and so doing your part to perpetuate the confusion surrounding this issue.
It's quite remarkable that Frist made this gambit during the same week that there was news of yet another promising advance in the use of adult stem cells to treat disease - in this case tissue damage caused by heart attacks. A successful study in pigs (apparently the kind that don't exercise regularly and watch their diets) showed that adult stem cells harvested from another pig's marrow could actually restore and repair heart muscle that had been damaged during a heart attack. Human studies are now beginning and results are expected by mid-2006.
The fetishizing of embryonic stem cell research would sometimes make you think that there is simply no other hope or possible avenue of study to treat disease. The truth is obviously quite different. While advances are made in many other areas all the time, no proven treatments have yet come out of embyronic stem cell research, and not for the want of trying by international scientists, as well as private and state funded researchers in the United States. President Bush's prohibition solely applies to the spending of Federal tax dollars on research that "destroys human life," i.e., embryos (21 of whom he invited to the White House as I referred to in a post back here). Of-course, a proven success with embryonic stem cells would not change the underlying moral equation, but it's just worth noting the bizarre situation that currently pertains - where promising research that poses no ethical problems gets ignored, while relative pie-in-the-sky research that is mired with moral dilemmas gets never-ending attention.
Back to Senator Specter, and his "I don't think a presidential candidate opposed to stem cells could be elected" remark. Plugging RWB's back pages once again - six days after the November 2nd, 2004 election there was this post which addressed the curious silence in the media about the failure of one of the cornerstone issues of the Kerry/Edwards ticket; namely, embryonic stem cell research. At the Democratic National Convention in Boston, it had been relentlessly brought up by speaker after speaker, with the coup-de-grace being delivered in a typically smarmy performance by the creepy Ron Reagan Jr. Not that it wasn't also emphasized in the candidate's speech. Then Christopher Reeve's death made it front and center for the media again - and who can forget Edwards' bizarre promise to the sick and disabled: "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
By the way, Senator Frist at the time called Edwards' remarks "crass" and "shameful."
Of-course after the election everyone was talking about those "moral values" voters, but somehow this particular issue, despite its prominence in the Democrats' campaign, didn't make it to the radar screen for the commentators. And now we have Republicans - or at least Arlen Specter - declaring that a presidential candidate would be unelectable unless he takes a position on this which is opposite to the one that President Bush took - Bush being the candidate who garnered over 62 million votes on November 2nd, and whose party increased their majority in both the Senate and House in a virtually unprecedented sweep.
The thing about McCain is that he succeeds in being the NY Times' favorite Republican without seeming to completely emasculate himself in the process. Frist's attempt to woo the liberal elite on embryonic stem cell research, in an effort to win the "moderates," will by contrast define him as a sorry and sad excuse for a Republican leader - because he has no alternate image of strength to fall back upon - and it effectively ends his run for president. Though he probably won't believe it until he's spent quite a few millions of dollars on a failed campaign.
Which will just go to show that his judgment about the politics of embyronic stem cell research is as flawed as his judgment about its ethics.
You are viewing an individual item from RightWingBob.com - click here to view the main page.
Original text copyright © 2005 by RightWingBob.com
Quotes from the works of others are linked to their source or are as otherwise attributed, and are used in accordance with Fair Use guidelines. Contact: rightwingbob(at)gmail.com
Email: RightWingBob@)gmail.com
RSS Feed: http://rightwingbob.com/weblog/feed/rss/