On stem cells, Specter’s playing for keeps

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) are headed for a showdown, but not over President Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee. The confrontation that’s looming is over something close to Specter’s heart, his stem cell bill. The bill, which is also sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), would override Bush’s ban on federal funding for stem cell research -- a ban that has stymied research into cures for the incurable.

At first, it appeared the bill would sail through the Senate as easily as it had passed the House. But that was before Frist and his conservative colleagues threw up a roadblock in the form of several competing bills proposing methods of creating stem cell lines that don’t involve the destruction of human embryos. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that the bills’ unproven methods would yield stem cells anytime soon.

What the bills would provide is a safe harbor for the senators who don’t want to anger Frist and the president -- but who also don’t want to risk the ire of a majority of Americans, who feel almost as strongly in favor of expanding stem cell lines as the minority does in opposing such a move. Many of these senators would have backed the Specter bill -- but now realize the substitute bills allow them a way out that won’t alienate anyone.

Already, the drumbeating for the alternative bills has begun. Leon Kass, head of the President’s Commission on Bioethics, whose position on the embryo problem is always to kick it aside for more studies by more committees, has weighed in and found the unproven methods “encouraging.”

Last week, Specter fought back at hearings and a news conference with actor Michael J. Fox, who has been the most famous face in the battle for research money for Parkinson’s disease.

But Specter, who has been battling Hodgkin’s disease since February, is his own draw now. Never weaker physically, never stronger mentally, Specter says he is propelled out of bed each day by his work and by the hundreds of letters he has received from patients determined to see stem cell research expanded. His former chief of staff, David Urban, calls him the Lance Armstrong of the Senate: “If you close your eyes and don’t look at his bald head and gaunt cheeks, but just listen to him, you’d think he was a well man at the height of his powers.”

Specter’s job now is to bat down Frist’s eleventh-hour “stalking-horse alternatives,” as he calls them. Before turning over the microphone to other speakers, Specter made the point that if the nation had waged the full-fledged war against cancer that President Nixon had pledged, there might be a cure for the lymphoma ravaging him today.

Specter may be weak physically, but Frist enters this fight weakened by his own mistakes. Stung by a string of miscalculations and transparent panderings that haven’t paid off, he’s made some senators wax nostalgic for the good old days under Trent Lott, who at least wasn’t distracted by dreams of being president.

Earlier this year, Frist was unilaterally disarmed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who stole seven Republicans to form the Gang of 14, taking Frist’s “nuclear option” on filibusters off the table for the time being. Then Frist couldn’t get a vote on the floor on John Bolton’s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. In another gaffe, Frist went on “Good Morning America” to claim he hadn’t diagnosed Terri Schiavo by videotape. Problem with that was there was a videotape showing him doing just that.

Frist did not look like much of a leader last week when he tried to preempt the Democrats’ empty threat to remove Karl Rove’s security clearance (for being the source of Valerie Plame’s outing) with a gesture of his own. He introduced an amendment to an unrelated bill to strip Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) of their security clearances. The Senate hadn’t seen such hand-to-hand combat since Frist broke with senatorial courtesy to take off for South Dakota to campaign against former Sen. Tom Daschle. Frist’s amendment was defeated, with 20 Republicans voting against it.

Although Frist controls the Senate, my money’s on Specter. Specter has conservative senators such as Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Gordon H. Smith (R-Ore.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) with him. And to Frist, who favored more stem cell research before changing his mind to comport with Bush’s stance, this is not a matter of life and death.