Meet Bill Frist: Senator championed confirmation of pro-abortion Satcher

Meet Bill Frist: Senator championed confirmation of pro-abortion Satcher
WorldNetDaily ^ | 12-19-02 | Joseph Farrah

Posted on 12/19/2002 9:01:50 PM PST by Salvation

Meet Bill Frist –
heir to Lott throne
Senator championed confirmation
of pro-abortion Satcher, fights fat

Posted: December 19, 2002
9:30 p.m. Eastern

By Joseph Farah
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – Everyone knows Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is the upper house's only physician. But who is this man who appears likely to become the next Senate majority leader?

Opponents of abortion on demand are likely to be deeply disappointed. While Trent Lott, R-Miss., had promised to bring to the floor for a quick, early vote a bill restricting partial-birth abortion, Frist championed the nomination by President Clinton of former Surgeon General David Satcher, a fervent supporter of unrestricted abortion and someone who actually performed abortions.

Satcher continued to serve in the Bush administration until earlier this year.

While Satcher's nomination was widely presumed to have originated with Vice President Al Gore, like Satcher, a Tennessean, his confirmation was actually championed by Frist.

Frist once told National Public Radio that there are no absolute right, absolute wrong answers in medicine. During last year's stem-cell debate, Frist proposed using leftover embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics for scientific research. The Weekly Standard also noted that Frist believes there is a moral imperative to use one unsalvageable life to save another.

Frist's other pet causes while serving in the Senate have been fighting AIDS in Africa and fighting obesity among Americans. He believes the federal government needs to increase funding of physical education programs in school. He thinks spending $125 million on a Centers for Disease Control program encouraging children to engage in athletics is another top priority.

He sponsored a bill earlier this year that would have authorized a nationwide ad campaign to promote better nutrition and exercise and would have authorized money for bicycle paths, parks and recreation centers.

According to sources close to the White House, Frist has been favored by Bush political adviser Karl Rove to take the helm of the Senate Republicans ever since Lott got himself embroiled in controversy with his remarks at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party.

Now Frist reportedly is considering a bid to oust Lott.

According to the Associated Press, GOP aides say Frist, now in his second term, is gauging support from his colleagues, having spent time sounding them out by telephone.

Sen. Bill Frist

One aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Frist would consider running for the job if colleagues asked him to do so "for the sake of the Senate as an institution or the long-term agenda of the Republican Party.''

In a sign that Frist might be building momentum, a Republican aide close to No. 2 Senate Republican Don Nickles of Oklahoma said Nickles would likely support a race by Frist.

Nickles, a longtime rival of Lott, believes he would have less support from colleagues than Frist for majority leader, the aide said.

Meanwhile, Lott sustained a double-barreled setback this week as Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., broke ranks to call for a change in party leadership and Secretary of State Colin Powell forcefully criticized his controversial remarks on race.

"I believe it's time to make a change," Chafee told reporters in his home state. "I think the process is happening," he said, encouraging the White House to step in to help ease Lott from power.

Powell, the highest-ranking African American in the Bush administration, made his first comments on a controversy that flared this month when Lott spoke favorably of Sen. Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential campaign of a half-century ago.

"If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either," Lott said at Thurmond's 100th birthday.

"I was disappointed in the senator's statement," Powell said. "I deplored the sentiments behind the statement."

"There was nothing about the 1948 election or the Dixiecrat agenda that should have been acceptable in any way to any American at that time or any American now."

Lott has maintained a defiant pose, insisting he would fight for his job at a Jan. 6 meeting of GOP rank and file senators and swiping at suggestions from anonymous officials with ties to the White House that he step down.

"There seems to be some things that are seeping out that have not been helpful," he said in Biloxi, Miss. "I understand how that happens because you've got a lot of people who work there that have different points of view," he told reporters.

"But I believe they do support what I am trying to do here and the president will continue to do so."

As WorldNetDaily reported earlier, nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Lott should be replaced as Republican leader, according to the results of a new survey.

Sixty-two percent say GOP senators should replace Lott when they meet Jan. 6, compared to just 18 percent who think he should remain the party's senate chief.

First winning entry to the Senate in 1994, Frist was re-elected in 2000 by the largest margin ever received by a candidate for statewide election in Tennessee history. He's the first practicing physician elected to the chamber since 1928.

A native of Nashville, Frist founded and subsequently directed the Vanderbilt Transplant Center, which became an internationally renowned center of multi-organ transplantation. He's performed some 200 heart and lung transplants and has written more than 100 articles, chapters and abstracts on medical research, as well as three books.