WASHINGTON -- Defection from anti-cloning ranks by Sen. Jim Talent, until now a rising star in the conservative movement, reflects deep divisions in the Republican Party created by the stem cell research issue. When Talent went on the Senate floor Friday to take his name off a bill to ban human cloning, he showed how those divisions imperil his re-election to a second term in Missouri this year.
Talent had been a longtime co-sponsor of Sen. Sam Brownback's anti-cloning bill. But Missouri business interests who finance the Republican Party are backing a state constitutional amendment that explicitly allows human cloning to enable scientific experiments on embryonic stem cells. Talent succumbed to pressure to step away from Brownback, basing this on the premise that there are new scientific developments. His risk is that his social conservative constituency will regard this as a betrayal and in turn abandon Talent at the polls...
Talent told me he could not take a position on the amendment because it is not on the ballot, is tied up in court and is not in its final form. In fact, it is sure to be on the ballot, faces no serious legal impediment and clearly permits human cloning in scientific research. Jim Talent, having stationed himself in the middle of the road on a passion-provoking issue, risks being run over.
Robert Novak is a Fox News Commentator and a columnist who writes Inside Report.
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27263447.shtml
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