Mitt Romney lost the legislative battle over cloning in the Bay State. Much attention has been paid to the idea that he opposed the statehouse bill to gain conservative creds. I just don’t see that—unless he’s a suicidal strategist. Had the embryonic-stem-cell/cloning fight there been all for his personal political gain (i.e. to warm anti-cloners to him), I think it would have made much more sense to have gone all the way, so to speak, and oppose the use of frozen embryos for research, too. You know, something actually popular with the audience he was supposedly targeting. Goodness knows it would have saved him a ton of grief just in that statewide battle—where folks who should have been on his side were hesitant to stand with him because they saw him as only going halfway. I think the guy—whose wife has MS, and has talked about her disease in the context of this—believes what he says on embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning. And, as far what happened in Mass. and what the future holds, he puts it all in context well. Romney, unlike many, many pols on these issues, makes sense (even if you can’t embrace his total position—though it is important to note he takes a hard line against creating new life for research). The following is from the Boston Globe yesterday:

Romney said Friday that he would support the Brownback bill. Though he lost in the Legislature, Romney predicts the Bay State debate will focus attention on cloning.
”I think there will be a view that Massachusetts, like California, is crossing into territory that our nation has never gone into before,” the governor said, expressing concern about cloning and California’s vote last fall for $3 billion to support stem cell research. ”That’s something which I think will lead to the expression of concern, and perhaps a careful look at federal legislation to define what the boundaries of ethics and science might be.”