Frist flip-flops, decides to back stem cell bill

Remember Frist's apparent effort to stall the vote on the stem cell research funding bill?

Well, it looks like Frist has changed his mind:

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.

Mr. Frist, a heart-lung transplant surgeon who said last month that he did not back expanding financing "at this juncture," is expected to announce his decision Friday morning in a lengthy Senate speech. In it, he says that while he has reservations about altering Mr. Bush's four-year-old policy, which placed strict limits on taxpayer financing for the work, he supports the bill nonetheless.

"While human embryonic stem cell research is still at a very early stage, the limitations put in place in 2001 will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases," Mr. Frist says, according to a text of the speech provided by his office Thursday evening. "Therefore, I believe the president's policy should be modified."

Frist's endorsement of the bill will most likely end the Senate stalemate on the bill, and as the article says, his decision might sway undecided Republicans in favor of the bill.

If the bill passes, what will Bush do?  He has sworn that he will veto all such legislation.  Will this put Frist on Bush's shit list?  Or is Frist just doing what any Republican considering a presidential run in 2008 would do:  distance themselves from an increasingly unpopular sitting Republican president?

He will certainly not make himself popular with the Christian right, who will most likely see this as flip-flopping:

"I am pro-life," Mr. Frist says in the speech, arguing that he can reconcile his support for the science with his own Christian faith. "I believe human life begins at conception."

But at the same time, he says, "I also believe that embryonic stem cell research should be encouraged and supported."

Frist's puppetmaster James Dobson isn't going to be very happy, along with all the other "culture of life" folks who voted for Bush in 2004.