Tom Davis hangs tightly to Stem Cell Research as a signature "moderate" issue: it convinces some voters that Davis is not a brainless loyal "Bushie" but is "his own man," a politician who can represent the many dual-MD and PhD couples included among his contituents.
But giving lip service to vital medical advances promised by stem cell research means little when Davis only takes action when action can't succeed.Davis can't claim to be "his own man" when has crossed party lines to vote with the Democrats less than 5% of the time. Those party-line votes for the Bush administration include some of the worst laws lobbyists ever wrote, and his vote for the rest of us could have made a difference. "The Central American Free Trade Agreement, the Energy Bill, Budgets and Budget Cuts that hurt college students, single parents and the working poor -- all passed ... by less than the five votes" hijacked from Texas. The criminal mastermind behind those five votes, Tom Delay, accomplished much of his scheme from the NRCC office space obtained for him by NRCC Chair Tom Davis.
Davis, on the other hand, has accomplished nothing with the stem cell votes that he uses to claim he's an independent thinker: the headcounts before voting already show the issue can't pass. In the meantime, the US has lost 15 years of research. Prominent international scientists, unwilling to limit their research with the contaminated cell lines legally available here, collaborate with scientists in other countries now. Many of those countries have fewer safeguards than those for US research. When the Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, offered to educate the citizenry on the source for and importance of stem cell research, he was silenced. Davis had a chance to free him to speak publicly, but Davis was silent, too.
Carmona said he spoke with other Surgeon Generals of administrations in both parties, and all were appalled at treatment of Carmona. On the unprecedented political pressure he received, Carmona said, "There was no nebulousness. I was told, 'This will be a political document or you are not going to release it.' And I refused to release it because I would not put the political rhetoric into that document that they wanted, because it would tarnish the office of the surgeon general when our colleagues saw us taking a political stand."
Now that Davis had to pass the gavel for the House Oversight Committee to Henry Waxman, Carmona is speaking out. Davis is supporting the administration's plan to muzzle the doctor on science and medicine.
"I'm not sure what the boundaries are for appointed political officials who sometimes have opinions different from the elected administration," Davis said."It's tough trying to define where you be a team player and where you speak out, and you try to balance that every day. But we have politicians who run the government, and not scientists."
The Surgeon General, "America's Doctor," was not talking about political opinions. He was talking about science.
It's not the first time Davis changed his position on an issue for the Party faithful. Davis also flip-flopped on immigration to suit Bush.