Senate GOP's #3 Slams #1 For Turning To #2

Right about now Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is either rueing the day he ever cut & ran on embryonic stem cell research or clapping his hands in delight at the storm of friendly fire that has christened his defection to the RINO ranks.

Now the rebukes are coming from his second deputy:

Senator Rick Santorum, R-PA, criticized Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Sunday for dropping his opposition to increased federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, saying the science has "questionable value."

"I disagree with Senator Frist," Santorum told ABC's This Week. "I think that you cannot take a utilitarian approach to human life - and this is an innocent human life. You're destroying this human life for the purpose of research that has questionable value."

Santorum said that the promise of embryonic stem cell research had been vastly overstated, explaining, "There's all sorts of information out there that this is research that very well may not ever end up to be helpful therapeutically."

It's about time that little detail got some national publicity. Especially since many Americans' most prominent memory of the ESCR topic is probably John Edwards' faith-healer gimmick last fall (You remember - "John Kerry will fully fund embryonic stem cell research, and people will magically get up from their wheelchairs and walk!" or something very similar).

Take note of what Santorum said next, given the degree to which Dr. Doofus has taken an indirect brickbat to his own difficult '06 re-election effort:

The Pennsylvania Republican said he was especially disappointed over the Frist move because the two had been working on other, less controversial proposals.

"We've seen over the last six months a whole bunch of scientific theories come forward as to how to get embryonic stem cells without destroying a human embryo," Santorum explained.

"I've been working on a bill with Senator Frist ... to try to put forward a funding proposal for the [National Institutes of Health] to look at alternative ways to get these embryonic stem cells, without creating a human embryo and without killing that embryo to get the cells."

"There's four or five different technologies that are potentially viable to get these cells," Santorum said, adding, "I don't think we need to go down this path." [emphasis added]

So there's more fuel on the fire. Not only did Fristy flip the bird at President Bush and a large portion of the Republican base, but he abandoned a principled - and courageous - colleague and their joint effort to find a genuine solution that accorded human life the "respect" that he claims he still has for it in order to throw in with the pro-death crowd for a few days of opposition "atta-boys" from people whose contempt for him has doubtless now become boundless.

I ask again, hardly for the first time but never before at this decibel level: Why is Bill Frist still Senate Majority Leader?