Michelle Goldberg claims, as John Hirschauer notes, that Republicans were at odds with the scientific consensus on stem cells. There was, in fact, a party that made dubious scientific claims central to its case on stem cells: a party whose platform and presidential nominee said that funding research on stem cells derived from human embryos might cure Alzheimer’s disease even after reporters had debunked the idea, and whose vice-presidential nominee promised that the research would enable people in wheelchairs to walk again. It was, of course, the Democratic Party.
President Obama eliminated the restrictions on federal funding that the Democrats were so bitterly opposing then, and President Trump has, unfortunately, not reinstituted them. Needless to say, embryo-destructive stem-cell research has not delivered anything like what we were led to expect. Which is why the debate we actually had has been memory-holed.