Top Republican: Stem Cells a 'Distraction'

clipped from www.cnn.com A top congressional Republican on Sunday criticized President Barack Obama's expected decision to reverse the Bush administration's limits on embryonic stem-cell research, calling it a distraction from the country's economic slump. "Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let's focus on what needs to be done," Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, told CNN's "State of the Union." Obama's move, scheduled for Monday morning, is part of a broader effort to separate science and politics and "restore scientific integrity in governmental decision-making," White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes said Sunday. The Bush administration's 2001 policy bars federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells beyond the cell lines that existed at the time.

A couple of points here. First, the ban on federal funding embryonic stem cell research was an executive order -- it'll take no time to reverse. The time it'll take away from focusing on the economy is roughly equal to the time Cantor will take for lunch Monday.

Second, how powerless has the evangelical right become that a top Republican can basically say, "Stem cell research? Pffft! Who cares about that?" It wasn't that long ago that Republicans were saying that the research was pretty much equal to a second Holocaust. Apparently, the Republican party no longer feels the need to kiss up to the religious right.