What an obnoxious editorial in the NYTimes this morning about Massachusetts cloning. The editors begin: “Let’s hope Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts was posturing for a national audience of conservative Republicans when he came out strongly for a ban on some of the most promising stem cell research planned at prominent institutions in his state.”

%#@%$!

I’ve already joked that I’ve been charmed by Romney. But no Boston reporter at yesterday’s press conference is going to persuasively tell me that he wasn’t impressed by how considered Romney was on the issue (I wasn’t in Boston, but listened to the audio). I wish he had gone all out and opposed using IVF embryos as well as creating new embryos for research, but he would have gotten nowhere had he taken that position there, for one thing. At the moment he’s really starting at a point where he’s reaching out: He says, ok, we can use frozen embryos. There’s meeting the other side at a point where they should be able to cooperate. And let’s look at all the many alternatives to using embryos in the first place.

See Romney’s problem seems to be—and I have no doubt this has something to do with his wife’s M.S.—he has really thought through this issue. So he gets it. He was citing that Dr. Hurlburt, who the bioethics commission had at their last meeting—who’s talking about another alternative possibility for the future. In other words, he just understands the issue just so much more than most pols and reporters writing on it.

Is he doing it because he wants to be president? Maybe. But I buy that he actually believes this stuff. And, to be brutally honest, he may fail, so I’m not sure as a political strategy it would be the world’s best road to the White House. But regardless, I think where he is right now is laudable and important and he deserves support from those of us who oppose human cloning, for taking this on.

I’ll have a little more on this all in a bit.