Pro-Life Conservatives Should Prepare For Another Bush Sell-Out - This Time On Stem Cells

Pro-life conservatives still smarting from Dubya's broken promise to nominate a Scalia/Thomas strict constructionist to the Supreme Court should begin to prepare for another Bush sell-out on life issues.

According to The American Spectator, the Bush Administration is considering cutting a deal with Arlen Specter on his embryonic stem-cell bill in exchange for his support of the Miers nomination:

There are other, big fights going on up on Capitol Hill besides the SCOTUS nomination, and none is bigger than the imminent legislative action on embryonic and non-embryonic stem cell research. Sources up on the Hill say it's possible that within the next week, the Labor-Health and Human Service-Education Appropriations bill will hit the Senate floor. "It could come as early as tomorrow [Friday]," says a Senate source.

Why is this such a big deal? Because Senator Arlen Specter, better known these days as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been agitating for a vote on embryonic stem cell research before the end of this legislative year, and he has threatened to use the Labor-Health approps bill to get it. Conservative Republicans are said to be concerned that he will offer this embryonic stem cell research legislation as an amendment during floor debate on the appropriations bill.

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Now word is coming out of the White House that it might not be opposed to Specter being allowed to offer his stem cell legislation as an amendment to the Labor-Health approps bill. And what does the White House get out of it? Specter's backing off from vocal criticism of SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers.

UPDATE (23 Oct 2005
Thanks to Publius of Res Publica et Cetera for pointing out in his comments to this post, as well as at his own blog, that Senate Majority Leader Frist seems to have disarmed Specter's efforts to attach his amendment to the HHS appropriations bill.

Also, Paul at Thoughts of a Regular Guy notes the following:

Now Reuters is reporting that we have until January for that vote (H/T: The Stem Cell Extremist):

Legislation to expand federally funded embryonic stem cell research will not come to a vote in the Senate until early next year, one of the sponsors, Senator Arlen Specter, said yesterday. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, told the chamber that Senate majority leader Bill Frist has agreed to scheduling a vote on the stem cell legislation then. Specter said he had decided against attaching it to a bill now before the Senate to fund the Labor and Health and Human Services departments, noting it would cause a ''multifaceted controversy."

Well, thank the Lord for small favors.