ch: Conservative ‘Values’

Senator Jim Talent (Finally) Picks a Stem Cell Position

Senator Jim Talent, in a re-election fight against Democrat Claire McCaskill, officially opposed a ballot measure that would safeguard early stem-cell research in Missouri. Kansas City Star

In a three-sentence statement issued late Monday afternoon, Talent said, “I personally cannot support the initiative because I’ve always been opposed to human cloning and this measure would make cloning human life at the earliest stage a constitutional right.”

Human cloning? Confused? You should be—the ballot measure specially bans human cloning:

A spokesman for the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, a group that includes the Stowers Institute in Kansas City, took exception to how Talent described the proposed constitutional amendment.

“Most Missourians do not believe that making life-saving stem cells in a lab dish is the same thing as cloning a human being,” said Donn Rubin, coalition chairman. “And the Missouri initiative will strictly ban any attempt to create duplicate human beings.”

What did Senator Talent do? Classic straw-man:

To “set up a straw man” or “set up a straw-man argument” is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact misleading, since the argument actually presented by the opponent has not been refuted.

Of course, when it comes to stem cell research, the talented Mr. Talent has been anything but clear: “For four years, he voiced support for federal legislation that would ban all human cloning, including that used in early, or embryonic, stem-cell research … Then, on Feb. 10 as his re-election fight with McCaskill heated up, Talent stunned Missouri’s anti-abortion leaders by renouncing that support”