Rick Santorum Criticizes Bill Frist on Stem Cells

NewsMax ^ | 7/31/05 | Limbacher

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., criticized Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Sunday for dropping his opposition to increased federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, saying the science has "questionable value."

"I disagree with Sen. Frist," Santorum told ABC's "This Week." "I think that you cannot take a utilitarian approach to human life - and this is an innocent human life. You're destroying this human life for the purpose of research that has questionable value."

Santorum said that the promise of embryonic stem cell research had been vastly overstated, explaining, "There's all sorts of information out there that this is research that very well may not ever end up to be helpful therapeutically."

The Pennsylvania Republican said he was especially disappointed over the Frist move because the two had been working on other, less controversial proposals.

"We've seen over the last six months a whole bunch of scientific theories come forward as to how to get embryonic stem cells without destroying a human embryo," Santorum explained.

"I've been working on a bill with Sen. Frist . . . to try to put forward a funding proposal for the [National Institutes of Health] to look at alternative ways to get these embryonic stem cells, without creating a human embryo and without killing that embryo to get the cells."

"There's four or five different technologies that are potentially viable to get these cells," Santorum said, adding, "I don't think we need to go down this path."

[TAdams8591]

Thanks, I understood exactly what point you were trying to make. For one thing he lost the support of many in his base. that equals votes. He is now 12 points behind in the polls.

Secondly, not everything is about party politics. There are issues BIG enough to transcend them. Getting pro-life, conservative pro-family legislators is one of them.

And it is NOT good political sense for the party and the president to support a Liberal politician who frequently stabs them in the back, and votes with the other party more than 50% of the time.

Santorum is someone who almost always votes with the party and does their bidding. That one time he could have gone against them.

Interesting that Spector's betrayal's never seem to hurt his support from Republicans at election time. It is doubtful that had Rick stayed out of it he would have lost the support of the president now.

[Huck]

Why have primaries then, if incumbents are entitled to support?

[little jeremiah]

later pingout.

[TAdams8591]

Good point. Incumbants should only get party support if they've earned it.

[pttttt]

Here's someone else who's harvesting human life: Chinese Harvesting of Prisoner Organs for Transplants.

Conservatives elected Frist. Conservatives can also unelect him. Time to check out his business connections, which may not stand up under scrutiny.

[RobbyS]

Specter may be dead by November, 2006.

[TeleStraightShooter]

When a human clone sues his maker in court, will the court give him the Dred Scott treatment?

[conservativecorner]

It's early and the polls mean squat at this point. If his numbers are down, it's because he's been moving away from what brought him to the senate in the first place.