JIM TALENT-- PORTRAIT OF EVERYTHING A LEADER IS NOT

Last fall the idea started floating that a nice counter-- and a far more positive and honest one, at that-- to the Republican Party's reliance on anti-gay ballot measures to motivate the hate-filled loons that make up such a crucial part of the GOP base, would be state ballot initiatives pushing stem cell research. Stem cell research is supported by virtually everyone in America outside of the most extremist lunatic fringe of the radical right.

And one state where this is going forward is Missouri (where polls find that pro-stem cell sentiment runs over 2-1 over the Neanderthal position which has been championed by right-wing loon incumbent, Jim Talent). Panicking after a series of polls showed Talent's Democratic challenger, popular State Auditor Claire McCaskill, beating him, Talent has now withdrawn his name as a co-sponsor of some fringe Republican anti-stem cell legislation.

Predictably this set off a furor from his extreme right-wing loony supporters who have been threatening revenge and screaming about betrayal. One frothing-at-the-mouth wackadoodle, Sam Lee, leader of a well-known hate group that calls itself Campaign Life Missouri threatened that his part of the right-wing base are "angry enough to skip voting for Talent in November."

Talent is wringing his hands and running around like a chicken without a head, looking like anything but a leader-- in a very tough situation. But with even hard core right-wingers like Bill Frist and Roy Blunt having abandoned the anti-stem cell barricades as indefensible, the divisions inside the GOP have left Talent looking so extreme (in a basically moderate state) that his hand was forced. With moderates turned off by his extremism and his own right-wing turned off by his flip-flopping on one of their core issues, people in Missouri and saying his word isn't worth the paper it's written on.