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Republican Obama?

Justin Webb | 20:19 UK time, Monday, 2 February 2009

To those who missed , I would say keep an eye on Michael Steele, who is both able and ambitious.

But is he quite the moderate that he appears to be? It seems to me that on one social issue, stem cell research, he could be completely outside the mainstream - every bit as much as, say, Sarah Palin probably is.

rightly focuses on an apology he had to give to Jewish-Americans, but his lack of thoughtfulness about stem cell research is mind boggling to millions of people whose relatives stand to benefit from this area of medicine (I am one - with my son's juvenile diabetes).

I remember a wise person during suggested that Americans tended to throw off some of their moral caution when the social issue at hand might affect them or their loved ones.

In that case it was the right to die - in the case of stem cells, it is the chances of frightening diseases, even paralysis, being tackled.

If could show some further progress over the next four or eight years, no Republican standing "against" stem cell research could win the presidency.

Much of what the Obama adminstration does a future Republican administration will undo: stem cell research is not such an issue. If it works, as with so much else in this nation, it will be enthusiastically adopted.

Of course a fair minded person would acknowledge that some of the research being conducted has NOT been hampered by the Bush restrictions (researchers used adult stem cells or those already in existence when the bans arrived) and that the whole field is still open to question as . But I still don't see the clock going back on this one - not in America.

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