His bait and switch
Governor Mitt Romney better hope he is a viable candidate for president, because he is fast becoming a long shot for reelection in Massachusetts.
In his bid to market himself nationally as an unyielding social conservative, Romney has forgotten that he sold himself to Massachusetts as a political moderate. I think it is Attorney General Thomas Reilly's office that fields bait-and-switch complaints in the Commonwealth.
Romney is not out of step with his state because he has ethical concerns about the use of cloning techniques to create embryos for stem-cell research. So does every thoughtful advocate of the bill that won overwhelming approval in the Legislature last week. That is why the conference committee reconciling the House and Senate versions will spend more time this week on specifics of regulation than complexities of science.
Qualms about the potential for abuse of embryos, and the women who produce them, are not Romney's problem. Believability is. He cannot tap his political war chest to buy airtime to thunder against a ''radical cloning bill," then shrug off the veto-proof vote with a ''game is over" comment, without raising doubts about which audience that ad was really targeting, South Natick or South Carolina.
The lopsided votes, 35-2 in the Senate and 117-37 in the House, speak volumes about the disconnect between Romney's rhetoric and political reality in Massachusetts. With their votes, lawmakers reflected the public's interest in exploring whether cellular medicine can conquer some of life's most debilitating diseases, from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's. Those lawmakers, and the voters they represent, are not unmindful that every scientific advance carries its own ethical challenge. They have chosen to confront rather than shrink from that challenge.
Claiming the moral high ground is always a perilous political strategy, but it is especially so when the claimant is plagued by terminal inconsistency. Romney knows that using cloning techniques to develop embryos for research is not the same thing as creating a human in a petri dish. The bill explicitly bans reproductive human cloning. Scientists would extract stem cells from the blastocyst, the group of cells that make up an embryo at its earliest stage. The embryos used for research will not have been fertilized.
If Romney believes that an unfertilized embryo is the moral equivalent of a human being, how can he endorse the use of spare embryos from fertility clinics for stem-cell research? The inconsistency mirrors the willingness of some who contend that abortion is murder to permit the termination of pregnancies that result from rape or incest. If an embryo or a fetus is a fully developed human life, why should the circumstances of its creation dictate its right to life?
It is politics, not science, which is hijacking the ethical debate about everything from embryonic stem-cell research to gay marriage to end-of-life medical care. The majority of Americans were horrified by the intrusion of Congress and the president into the medical decisions governing the treatment of Terri Schiavo, not because they are callous about that family's tragedy but because they do not want Tom DeLay at the bedside if tragedy befalls a loved one of their own.
Romney says the United States is in the midst of ''a battle on the ideals and ethics that define our nation's culture." But his is a phony war, cooked up by religious zealots, served up by right-wing talking heads, and swallowed whole by a Republican Party that has sold its big tent to shack up with a pack of screamers.
''Last year the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck a blow against the family," Romney told an audience in Spartanburg, S.C., in February. He did not disclose that, in an effort to strike a compromise, he had supported civil unions for same-sex couples. He withheld that information because a moderate stance in Massachusetts is ''a blow against the family" in South Carolina. As he considers his prospects for reelection, Romney ought to remember that that door swings both ways.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reachedat mcnamara@globe.com.
