Nancy Reagan To Skip GOP Conclave

(CBS/AP)  Nancy Reagan won't attend the Republican National Convention in New York City next month, according to published reports.

The Houston Chronicle, citing a Reagan confidant, said the 83-year-old former first lady had rebuffed inquiries from GOP officials who offered her a speaking role at the convention.

Separately, the New York Daily News said GOP officials had confirmed that Mrs. Reagan - a Republican icon in her own right - had decided against coming to New York.

"I do not expect her at our convention," Republican chairman Ed Gillespie told reporters on Tuesday. The Daily News said some GOP officials were disappointed with her decision, which has been known to the White House for some time.

Mrs. Reagan spoke last week in San Diego at a ceremony marking the return to home port of the Navy aircraft carrier named for the late president.

Nancy wasn't the only Reagan making things uncomfortable for the GOP. In a slap to his late father's political party, Ron Reagan told Democratic delegates Tuesday that voters in November face a choice between "the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology," on the matter of embryonic stem cell research.

Reagan's appearance drew a sharp and personal response from his half-brother, Michael Reagan, a conservative talk show host.

Ron Reagan, a television journalist and longtime liberal activist, insisted that his speech was not intended to be political and that the issue of stem cell research should never be partisan.

But his brother Michael Reagan, told CBS News Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm that his brother's appearance in Boston had everything to do with politics.

"He (Ron) really doesn't want George Bush reelected and this became an issue he could use for the Democratic convention," Michael Reagan said. "Nobody's surprised, I think, in the family that he would be at the Democratic convention. He's never really supported Republicans at all."

Michael Reagan also criticized Ron and sister Patti Davis for not joining their mother at a ceremony for the USS Ronald Reagan last week.

"If Ron is going to find time to show up at the DNC convention, it would he nice if he and Patti would have been at the home porting of the USS Ronald Reagan," Michael Reagan said. "I know that she [Mrs. Reagan] would love to have her kids, Patti and Ron, with her when her husband, our father, is honored like he was last Friday."

Ron Reagan, 46, became an active supporter of stem cell research after his father, President Reagan, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The elder Reagan died of complications of the disease last month at age 93. Nancy Reagan also is a strong advocate of stem cell research.

"I am here tonight to talk about the issue of research into what may be the greatest medical breakthroughs in our or in any lifetime — the use of embryonic stem cells, cells created using the material of our own bodies — to cure a wide range of fatal and debilitating diseases," Reagan said in his address at the convention.

Michael Reagan says he is also active in the fight against Alzheimer's, but sides with those who feel further scientific research is the best route to a cure.

Scientists believe stem cells, the body's building blocks, can be used to repair organs or treat diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. But because stem cells are typically removed from days-old human embryos that are later destroyed when the cells are extracted, many anti-abortion activists oppose such research.

President Bush has ordered sharp restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, allowing it only for stem cells created before Aug. 9, 2001.

"It does not follow that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many," Ron Reagan said. "And how can we affirm life if we abandon those whose own lives are so desperately at risk?"

And while acknowledging some opponents of the research truly believe that an embryo at its earliest stages is an actual fetus, "a few of those folks ... are just grinding a political ax and should be ashamed of themselves."

Ron Reagan devoted much of his speech to describing a 13-year old friend who suffers from juvenile diabetes, saying she faces an uncertain future.

"What excuse will we offer this young woman should we fail her now?" Reagan asked. "That facing political opposition, we did nothing? That even though we knew better, we did nothing?"