Mitt Romney Loves Skin, Hates Pot

Former Governor Mitt Romney has a lot to be thankful for this year. His presidential campaign looks pretty healthy as primary season approaches. As he prepares to settle in at the head of the very long Romney family Thanksgiving table, he’s made a little bit of news to hold us over on this long weekend.

With yesterday’s news that stem cells were successfully created from skin cells instead of human embryos, Mitt took the opportunity to validate his earlier opposition to stem cell research.

New developments confirm that cutting edge science and ethical principles are not opposed to one another. . . . This is a result the whole public can celebrate. The scientists deserve credit for their genius, but equally, the voices insisting on ethical science and respect for human life provided the incentive for this revolutionary research.

While Mitt may be able to enjoy this Thanksgiving meal without a moral quandary, the ethical debate over stem cells may be far from over.

Dr. Leonard I. Zon, director of stem cell research at Children’s Hospital Boston, said yesterday that he was not sure the new research would meet Romney’s ethical standards because the embryonic-like cells could become brain cells, sperm, or eggs, raising their own moral concerns.

“One might wonder what the ethics are as you move forward in the research,” said Zon, who met with Romney’s aides to discuss the science in 2005.

Fortunately, it wasn’t all gray area for Romney. At a campaign event in New Hampshire yesterday, Illinois Democrat Barack Obama told students that he was kind of a punkass in high school. Naturally, Romney took the opportunity to express his disappointment in Obama. We’ll get to that in a second. First, what Obama said:

“I will confess to you that I was kind of a goof-off in high school as my mom reminded me,” said Obama, who grew up in Hawaii. “You know, I made some bad decisions that I’ve actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time that I didn’t really apply myself a lot. It wasn’t until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, ‘Man, I wasted a lot of time.’ “

As an aside, we’d like to congratulate the Globe on the brilliant headline “Obama gets blunt with New Hampshire students” in a story that mentions his pot use. It’s no Herald cover, but it’s good.

Romney is shocked—shocked—that Obama could be so honest with teenagers about mistakes he made when he was younger.

“It’s just not a good idea for people running for president of the United States, who potentially could be the role model for a lot of people, to talk about their personal failings while they were kids, because it opens the doorway to other kids thinking, ‘Well I can do that too,’ ” Romney said while campaigning in Iowa Tuesday.

That’s pretty easy for him to say. The most scandalous thing he did as a young adult was steal material from Loony Tunes. Please pass the sutherickin’ schatash, Governor.