Another Walker Two-Step, This Time On Stem Cells
Trying to have it both ways and not tick off the influential bi-partisan constituency making up Madison's most promising homegrown academic and business development - - cutting-edge stem cell R&D - - GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker stumbles badly.
Academe is not his strong suit, it turns out.
Where Walker excels is spin and evasion - - the professional politicians's pivot.
Walker wants the state to force the UW-Madison to switch funding for embryonic stem cell programs to adult-stem cell work, as if the two were interchangeable.
This is an empty rhetorical ploy.
It would be like saying the state and Governor would force the UW-Madison to shift its football program financing and personnel to the volleyball program - - without consequence - - because the two are team sports and have the word "ball" in their titles.
Or switching the teachers of History of Science to Political Science because they are both "sciences."
Imagine Walker meddling further in research University-wide by physicians, physicists and physical education professors.
The adult stem cell and embryonic stem cell programs are specializations, and I suspect that Walker and his people know this, but tried to parse and finesse their way through it to confuse the issue and minimize the electoral pounding that is coming his way in Dane County.
2 comments:
"Imagine Walker meddling further in research University-wide by physicians, physicists and physical education professors."
. . . and him, without a college degree. . . .
Of course, the original attack ad that lead to what you call a "two step" is just as misleading.
It says that Walker wants to ban "stem cell research", without drawing the distinction between adult and embryonic stem cell research.
Walker only wants to stop embryonic research.
So if the attack ad acts as if the two are identical and interchangeable, then why can't he make similar proposals?
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