“In a break with President Bush, the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, has decided to support a bill to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, a move that could push it closer to passage and force a confrontation with the White House, which is threatening to veto the measure,” reports the NYT.
Washington wags and cynics have already begun their search for 2008 presidential political angles, but those who know Frist best — and reporters who actually listen to him and watch closely — see this decision as one of thoughtful principle and science, not politics. […]
[H]e’s been working on this speech for about a month. According to an aide, the date prohibition on the President’s plan has, in the view of the Senator, unfortunately “crabbed research.” […]
Sen. Kennedy applaud[ed] the Frist decision and Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) call[ed] the policy Frist is now supporting “morally reprehensible.” (ABC’s The Note)
Glenn Reynolds at INSTAPUNDIT: “I’m with Frist.”
WILL BUSH VETO the bill? More below + a POLL:
A White House aide this morning tells ABC News, “the President was aware of the position Sen. Frist was going to take today on the issue…. The President believes that the federal government should use taxpayer dollars for stem cell research on lines that we have previously specified. There is really no such thing as ‘an embryo that would be discarded anyway.’ No woman/couple is forced to discard an embryo if she wants to donate to research. There are plenty of private sector research options that she could turn to.”
“I’m doing this as somebody who has convictions,” Frist told Good Morning America. “This is not about politics. It is about policy. It is about principle. It is about human life.” […]
According to an aide, the Senator “has been thinking about this issue a lot during the spring, has been talking with experts scientists colleagues and ethicists over the past few months, has read much of the research, listened and worked with colleagues and was reaffirmed in his conviction that now was the time to speak strongly and clearly about his principles and what they meant in legislative practice.”
[…]
You will hear some Democrats seek to portray Sen. Frist as wishy-washy — he defended the President at the Republican convention in 2004 on stem cells, and the Frist pushback will be a 2001 speech where he endorsed research from discarded blastocysts. Other Democrats will cheer him, and the pro-research media will be ga-ga over the shift. (ABC’s The Note)