Tripping Over Their Own Trunks

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and Elephants gotta knock their knees together in fear. Maybe the Democrats should consider changing their party emblem to a mouse instead.

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Freshman GOP Senator Jim Talent, elected in the swing state of Missouri to fill out the term won by deceased Donk Mel Carnahan in 2000 on the strength of his social conservative base, has caved to pro-embryonic stem cell research pressure from Missouri business interests and removed his co-sponsoring name from a bill banning human cloning. This was on the ostensible premise that the bill, authored by Kansas' Sam Brownback, is "overly broad" and could end up also banning "Altered Nuclear Transfer" (ANT), an alternative source of ESCs that would not be alive as we understand the term.

Nobody appears to be buying Talent's excuses, either for bailing on the human cloning ban or waffling on a pro-cloning Missouri constitutional amendment, on which the junior senator won't take a position on the dubious claim that it's "tied up in court" and "isn't be on the ballot," though every indication is that it will be. What did spook him is the attacks of his neck & neck Dem challenger, State Auditor Claire McCaskill, accusing Talent of wanting to "criminalize" attempted research for "life-saving cures," which is sheer BS since, as has been documented in this space, ESCs are the fool's gold of experiment medicine and far less promising than adult stem cell research.

But rather than making that argument and standing for his pro-life principles, Talent caved instead. And that social conservative base, which he's going to need awfully badly next November, is unlikely to forget.

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Michael Steele, Maryland Lieutenant-Governor and GOP candidate to succeed retiring Donk Senator Paul Sarbanes, rhetorically tip-toed too close to Godwin's Law last Thursday during a luncheon speech at the Baltimore Jewish Council, at least in the minds of some, with this embryonic stem cell research-related comment:

"[Y]ou of all folks know what happens when people decide they want to experiment on human beings, when they want to take your life and use it as a tool."

Social libs wasted no time in firing broadsides of cynically contrived moral outrage at what was really a very apt parallel, and Steele wasted no time in apologizing for it:

"I offended members of the Jewish community and members of the Maryland community. It was a remark that was an improper inference, because I never specifically said 'Holocaust.' ... And it did not reflect my attitude and my belief, and I am really sorry about the whole thing."

It should be noted that, unlike Jim Talent, Michael Steele isn't changing his opposition to ESC research. But in as uphill a state for any Republican as Maryland is, he may have done to himself the equivalent of what Talent did with his el foldo on cloning - alienate a critical voting bloc without whose support he cannot win in November.

Having made the comment, I think he'd have been better off standing by it and staying on-message. His apology will avail him nothing, as every return to the ESC topic will just bring up this same "offense." But that's protoplasm under the bridge, I guess.

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While making a valid criticism of President Bush for ignoring the growing problem of the Castro/Chavez/Morales axis in Latin America, freshman Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez pulled a similar cut & run on the euthanasia issue by expressing second thoughts about the congressional GOP's intervention in last spring's state-ordered murder of Terry Schiavo. Which is harder to understand since Martinez isnt up for re-election until 2010 and nobody, to my knowledge, is pressuring him to flee that courageous stance.

Jim Talent and Michael Steele are getting bulldozed; Mel Martinez, by contrast, may be "growing in office" all on his own.

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The Barrett Report, the heavily redacted version of Independent Counsel David Barrett's report on Clinton-era IRS abuses, has apparently disappeared down the Senate black hole, and no Pachyderm has any desire or intention of forcing its full release.

In the opposite position, does anybody truly believe that a Dem majority wouldn't be all over an equivalently redacted report on alleged Bush Administration "abuses"?

Thus is one more impediment to a Clinton restoration needlessly abandoned.