We know the Dems are playing defense. Part of what comes with that role is that you don’t get to set the agenda. You have to play each game with your eye on the scoreboard to see what everyone else is doing. You can’t just win – your opponents have to lose. They have to make mistakes. Mark A. R. Kleiman thinks George Bush is making a big mistake by planning to veto the stem-cell bill:
Perfect. Just what we need. Take an issue where public sentiment is clearly with the Democrats, and set it up so the radical conservatives of the Texas Republican Party are standing between sick people and miracle cures. Exectly the right issue for the 2006/2008 elections: science and health v. fanaticism.
Liberalism lost public favor mostly because it came to appear to many voters that electing liberals meant having the government get in the way of stuff they wanted to do. I’m delighted to see the right making the same dumb mistake.
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One response to “Science and health vs. fanaticism”
I remember talking with (civil-liberties, but conservative) Philosophy professor Joe Tussman about abortion. I said it was always arbitrary where we draw the line between potential life and its actualization.
Suppose, I said, that you were in bed with your wife and the telephone rang at just the wrong moment. He said, “You always answer the telephone?”