Q: When is a minority party Senator not in the minority?
A: When he's Arlen Specter.
Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA) has tabled discussion of stem cell research restrictions until 2006, making it a guaranteed election-year issue and picking his fight with the no-doubt crippled White House of next year rather than the "last throes" White House of today:
A Senate debate over whether to ease federal restrictions on stem cell research will be put off until next year, an influential senator seeking to relax the rules said Friday.
Two points:
First point, this is a good move with a small cost. The cost is that the science will lose another year - and, worse, it may inhibit other states from following California's financing initiative if they think the federal floodgates may be opening in a year. Uncertainty is never good for investing.
But the potential gain is large. The public already has 2-1 support for stem cell research (57% for - 30% against), and those who have heard a lot about the debate are even more strongly in favor of it (68% for - 25% against) compared to those who have heard little or nothing about stem cells (49% for - 36% against; 32% for - 37% against). Increasing public awareness of the issue dramatically helps our cause, and the implication is that as time passes the public's rumbling will become a thunder.
And when and if that time comes, the Senate will be listening. Unlike the dastardly deeds they can get away with in off-years, in the 2006 Senate the time lag from Senate floor to home state voting booths is short enough that they have to appeal beyond their base.
With the White House already flailing, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Marionnette) was happy to agree to Specter's request not to bring another contentious issue up for debate right now. Do you think the White House will be stronger next year than it is today? I don't. And that matters:
President Bush has threatened to veto any measure that conflicts with his policy, issued in 2001, allowing federal money for stem cell research to flow only to work on cell lines, or colonies, that existed then.
Letting public opinion build and the White House crumble before picking this fight is a smart move, at the relatively small (though signficant) cost of another year's delay in the science.
Second point, I'm loving Arlen these days. During the Roberts confirmation hearings he kept the focus on Roe vs. Wade, in my opinion more strongly than any of our guys managed to. It was his one driving theme during the hearings, and won the first day's news cycle. We'll see how he does on Miers, but so far his statement that "She needs a crash course in Constitutional law" warmed my heart. I'm glad the Republican party hasn't ousted all their moderates yet.
In fact, going by his chief issues alone, pro-choice and pro-science, I wouldn't even know Specter was a Republican. He certainly does as well as any Democrat I've heard at articulating the ethics of stem cell research:
"If all these embryos could be adopted, produce life, I would not have any interest in advocating scientific research on them. But if they're going to be thrown away, it makes a lot more sense to use them than to throw them away."
It wasn't so long ago that kos wrote on the front page, "PA-Sen: Toomey will win tomorrow" albeit with backhanded regret:
So PA Republicans have a choice between a moderately successful centrist Republican incumbent with significant cross-over appeal to Democrats, or a wingnut candidate far to the right of the Pennsylvania general electorate. And I can't believe I'm rooting against the out-of-touch-with-the-electorate wingnut.
The appeal of the wingnut, of course, was that he'd be a better punching bag for our nominee, Joe Hoeffel. Food for thought: What would the stem-cell debate and SCOTUS hearings look like if Specter had been forced out, by either Toomey (R) or Hoeffel (D) ?
It makes me wonder if ideology doesn't sometimes trump party, and whether we should let folks like Chafee alone and look harder at ones like Lieberman.