Fresh off her convention speech Tuesday night, Ann Romney spent Wednesday wooing two of the GOP’s toughest audiences: women and Hispanic voters. At a lunch event Wednesday, Romney explained why Hispanic voters should vote for her husband. Pitching herself as “the daughter of immigrants,” Romney (who is the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner) urged Latinos to get past “some of their biases” and come to their senses:

You’d better really look at your future and figure out who’s going to be the guy that’s going to make it better for you and your children, and there is only one answer… It really is a message that would resonate well if they could just get past some of their biases that have been there from the Democratic machines that have made us look like we don’t care about this community. And that is not true. We very much care about you and your families and the opportunities that are there for you and your families.

Hispanic voters have so far remained skeptical of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, who stood out as the most anti-immigrant candidate during the Republican primary and touted a plan to make undocumented immigrants so uncomfortable that they would “self-deport.” He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act that would give young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children a path to citizenship. Ann’s accusation of Democratic manipulation echoes comments made by Arizona governor Jan Brewer (R) earlier in the day, when she claimed Obama was “race-baiting” and pandering to Latinos.

Ann also offered a recent trip to Puerto Rico as evidence of her ties to the Latino community: “I had the most rocking time in Puerto Rico at a political rally than I’ve ever had in my entire life. You people really know how to party. It was crazy!”

Stem cell research was, along with marriage equality, the culture war issue of the Bush years. Embryonic stem cell research — which involves pushing malleable cells taken from a human embryo to develop into cells that can be used to treat ailments — continues today with the help of federal dollars, a policy on which President Obama and Mitt Romney differ sharply. So why isn’t anyone talking about it?

The answer appears to be part science and part politics. Several alternatives to embryonic research have been developed in recent years and, though they haven’t yet completely replaced embryonic research (more on that later), the promise of medical advancement without raising ethical hackles has attracted a great deal of the available dollars, lowering the salience of embryonic research as a political issue. Further, Republican radicalism prevents any legislative action. Though federal support for embryonic stem cell research was a bipartisan issue as recently as 2007, the 2010 elections swept in a wave of Republicans more likely to push their own hardline laws on the issue than pass a bill cementing federal research funding.

This means the status quo, where the President determines whether government dollars subsidize embryonic research through executive order, seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Which is a bigger deal than you might think: a 2011 review of recent scientific work found that the most promising alternative to embryonic stem cell research, induced pluripotent (iPS) stem cell research, depends heavily on continued embryonic research to remain viable. Further, federal funding is becoming increasingly important to the field as support from cash-strapped states dries up. In other words, November’s election decides the fate of a significant source of funding for research that, according to the NIH, could “offer the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases including Alzheimer’s diseases, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis.” And no one’s really talking about.

So what do the candidates think? in 2009, President Obama repealed President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding for research that creates new stem cells lines, an integral part of embryonic research that involves destroying an embryo to acquire new cells for laboratory use. The Bush ban on the creation of new lines crippled research receiving federal funding, while Obama’s repeal funneled funding to more scientifically viable embryonic research.

Romney, by contrast, appears to want to go back to Bush’s policies or, worse, ban federal funding of embryonic stem cell research altogether. Though his campaign is slippery on what he’d do once elected (it did not return request for comment on this piece), Romney said during his first run for the Presidency that he opposed the use of federal dollars to support the creation of new lines. The remarks didn’t clarify whether President Romney would simply return to the Bush policy of only funding research on existing stem cell lines or whether, as Yale bioethics expert Steven Latham suggests, “he opposes the public funding of any embryonic stem-cell research.” Romney’s more recent public remarks aren’t helping: when asked this year if he was “100 percent pro-life, meaning embryonic stem cell research” he simply said “I’m pro-life. I’m in favor of protecting the sanctity of life. I will cut off funding to Planned Parenthood.” His campaign site does not clarify his position beyond saying “Quite simply, America cannot condone or participate in the creation of human life when the sole purpose of its creation is its sure destruction.”

Pro-life groups believe Romney supports their maximalist position on stem cells. Mallory Quigley, a spokesperson for the Susan B. Anthony List, told ThinkProgress that “The SBA List has endorsed Governor Romney for President and is 100 percent confident in his pro-life position on stem-cell research. As a pro-life candidate, Governor Romney has pledged to advance research using morally unproblematic adult stem cells and other non-destructive alternatives.” In short: Romney supports some sort of anti-science policy on embryonic stem cell research. It’s just not clear which one.

Romney has argued, in line with Quigley’s position, that alternatives like iPS cells render further embryonic research unnecessary. However, it’s near-impossible in practice to separate federal funding for embryonic research from funding for iPS work, as many iPS research today uses embryonic research as a compliment. Implementing Romney’s position would severely limit the iPS research he claims to support.

But even if you grant the practicability of Romney’s position, the science is far too unsettled to make clear determinations about which research is most likely to yield medical results. John Gearhart, a pioneer in the stem cell field who was on the first team to report successfully derive embryonic stem cells back in 1998, told ThinkProgress that “we are still learning things from the basic science.” In his view, it’s near-impossible to make hard-and-fast determination as to what method of stem cell research will be necessary to make medical breakthroughs. That’s in itself strong reason to allow federal dollars to go to whatever research the NIH believes to be the most promising.

Further, Gearhart said, there are some compelling reasons to believe that embryonic stem cells are particularly critical to scientific progress given the state of the current science. Embryonic stem cells are the only human cells that naturally differentiate into new types — i.e., heart tissue cells that could be used to repair damaged areas. All alternative stem cell research essentially attempts to create artificial equivalents, and may fail to do so in an effective or safe fashion unless they can be tested against embryonic cells. That’s why iPS researchers today still use embryonic stem cells as a point of comparison. Moreover, according to Gearhart, embryonic cells are (to date) the only sort of stem cell that can be grown at the scale required to develop treatments for humans. “If you put a couple thousand cells into [a mouse] heart you can see some remarkable improvement,” he said. “To do the same thing in a human, you need millions.” This view isn’t limited to Gearhart — a number of prominent stem cell scientists have recently reiterated the importance of continued embryonic research even in light of developments in iPS research.

“We need money in this area. Badly,” Gearhart told me.

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama traveled to Europe and was greeted by hundreds of thousands of supporters and excited foreign leaders at almost every stop along his tour. Pundits across the board labeled the trip a success for the campaign, so it’s understandable why, four years later, candidate Mitt Romney thought it would be a good idea to do an overseas trip of his own.

Things haven’t exactly gone according to plan, though. During his first stop in London, Romney enraged an entire country by questioning Great Britain’s readiness to host the olympics, which began the day he arrived. The notoriously merciless UK media flambéed Romney with big headlines and scathing editorials.

Romney then moved on to Israel, where he explained to a room full of wealthy donors why Palestinians were generally poorer than Israelis due to their inferior “culture.” Israeli and Arab press alike were incensed, calling the remark racist (a charge the Romney campaign vigorously denies.)

And then today in Poland, as reporters who had traveled a cumulative 10,000 miles with the campaign faced their sixth day without having an opportunity to ask a single question to the candidate, a Romney campaign spokesman told a restless gaggle to “kiss my ass” when they tried to shout their questions at Romney as he left Pilsudski Square in Warsaw.

In all, not Mitt Romney’s best week:

Mitt Romney is scheduled to speak at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention. He will purportedly focus solely on the economy, steering clear of addressing the controversial voter identification laws that the civil rights organization sees as “systematically suppressing voters of color, students and the elderly.” Indeed, Romney has previously backed the very efforts the NAACP opposes, saying, “I like Voter ID laws by the way… more of them,” ignoring the evidence that voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise African-Americans:

• A Center for American Progress investigation concluded that “these laws hinder voting rights in a manner not seen since the era of Jim Crow,” given that minorities (along the young and the poor) are more likely to be unable to acquire photo identification.
• Indeed, 25 percent of African-American voters lack the type of ID required to vote under these laws.
• Attorney General Eric Holder called the standard voter ID legislation “a new poll tax” after his Department of Justice found sufficient grounds under the Voting Rights Act to block ID laws in South Carolina and Texas due to their disproportionate impact on minority voters.
• Voter fraud, the problem Voter ID laws are ostensibly supposed to correct, is basically nonexistent. Even proponents of the legislation can’t point to any actual examples.
• Voter ID laws are occasionally justified in straightforwardly racist or partisan Republican terms.
• Romney may know all of this – he used to support an extraordinarily progressive approach to getting voters ID.

Civil rights leaders are already taking a hard look at Romney’s “abysmal” record on the issues as Governor of Massachusetts. One has to wonder whether he – or any other Republican – could hope to make inroads in the African-American community while supporting such blatant voter suppression tactics.

In an emotional speech about the difficulty of motherhood and life on the campaign trail, Ann Romney used an odd choice of words to discuss mothers who are forced to work while raising their children.

Ann Romney was at the center of a national discussion recently after a Democratic consultant charged that the would-be future first lady couldn’t possibly understand the plight of working mothers because she had the luxury to stay home and devote herself full time to raising her kids. The Romney campaign fired back, accusing Democrats of lacking respect for stay at home moms.

The issue was largely dismissed after a few days as a ginned-up “silly season” controversy, but Ann Romney’s comments last night at the Connecticut Republican Party’s Prescott Bush Awards Dinner could potentially reignite the issue. After discussing how she understands the challenges mothers face, Romney said, according to BuzzFeed:

Romney alluded to the fact that not all women can stay at home saying, “I love the fact that there are women out there who don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids. Thank goodness that we value those people too. And sometimes life isn’t easy for any of us.”

It seems Romney was trying to express empathy for women who don’t have the option to stay at home, as she did. But the comment that she “love[s]” that some women “don’t have a choice” and must work is unusual, to say the least, and could lead to a new round of charges that the Romneys don’t understand average Americans, given their enormous wealth.

Nearly two-thirds of women are the breadwinner or co-bread winner in their households. Nonetheless, the gender pay gap remains. And while Mitt Romney has broken with most Republicans to support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, he has still not yet taken a position on the Paycheck Fairness Act.