Rep. Michael N. Castle (Del.), president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, said the overwhelming victory in "the most significant state in the country, with a Republican governor endorsing it, is very hard to ignore." He said 190 House members have endorsed his bill expanding federal funding to research on stem cells obtained from "spare" embryos at fertility clinics, if donors give written consent and do not receive a financial inducement.
Last summer, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a physician, said he thought the Bush policy should be revisited after Election Day. The implication, according to Castle and others, was that Frist hoped to broaden it. Now Frist is not certain that would be possible in the new, more Republican Senate, said one adviser who could not be quoted discussing internal deliberations.
 
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"The fulcrum of the center has moved to the right," this aide said, making it hard "for people who want to expand the president's policy."
Weighing on Frist is the potency of the stem cell issue with the GOP base, his adviser said. "We've been surprised by the fervor. It almost rivals abortion."
Many conservatives argue that California does not represent mainstream America and that the authors of Prop 71 overstepped by allowing state funding of therapeutic cloning.
"This means California will become a center for human cloning research, and I don't think most voters realized that," said Richard M. Doerflinger, deputy director for pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"It will invite retaliatory action by people like Senator Brownback, who wanted to criminalize all types of research," said H. Rex Greene, a San Mateo physician who opposed Prop 71. "That's what these guys invited when they took such an extreme position." Brownback's cloning ban would make it a crime for patients treated outside the United States with therapies derived from embryonic stem cells to reenter.
Doerflinger said the bishops' conference may revive its campaign to pressure undecided lawmakers to support the Brownback bill, which he said may have a majority of Senate votes but perhaps not a filibuster-proof 60 votes.
At a minimum, conservatives expressed confidence they will be able to curtail federal spending on embryonic stem cells by arguing that at a time of growing deficits it is unnecessary to duplicate California's massive investment.
Carl Feldbaum, president of the pro-research Biotechnology Industry Organization, said he does not expect the political wars to cease until there is a "demonstrable success" in the laboratory. "People are claiming it's unproven and may not work," he said. "The research will have to debunk that."
