Republican Split on Stem Cells Creates `Wedge' Issue

[Wise Young]

The Republicans definitely do not want this "wedge" issue to be played out in the elections. Therefore, the pressure is upon them to settle the issue before the summer. If they decide to oppose embryonic stem cell research, all the families that now are placing their hopes on stem cell research will hold it against them. At the same time, there are many opponents to embryonic stem cell research who are holding their feet to the fire and will feel betrayed (as they did when Frist turned on this issue). Most legislators hoping to duck this issue must now come out either for or against. If they do not, it will come back to hit them in the face at the time of the elections.

Wise.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...VJHfk&refer=us

Republican Split on Stem Cells Creates `Wedge' Issue (Update1)

March 22 (Bloomberg) -- In 2002, when he was an 18-year-old freshman at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Jeff McCaffrey was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. A Catholic and opponent of abortion, McCaffrey is now an ardent campaigner for research using stem cells from human embryos.

``I have no moral qualms,'' said McCaffrey. ``It is simply cells,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``Scientists can make those stem cells that are blank turn into spinal cells and heal my injury.''

People such as McCaffrey present a quandary for Republicans, who are split over whether to allow federal funding for research on new stem cells from human embryos. Senate Democrats plan to force a debate on the issue in the coming months and use it in the campaign leading up to the November elections.

Republicans plan their own debate over bioethics in an effort to limit the damage from letting stem cells become ``a wedge issue that divides Republicans,'' Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in an interview.

Republicans in the past often have benefited from such ``wedge issues'' -- subjects that divide Democrats' constituencies, such as gun control, abortion and gay marriage. Stem-cell research may be one of the first wedge issues that hurts Republicans more because of President George W. Bush's stand against it; polls show a majority of the public disagrees with him.

``Stem-cell research could define '06 Senate races,'' to the advantage of Democrats, said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.