[tannhaeuser]

Yes and no. It absolutely makes sense to ensure that admin scripts used by RHEL run in a predictable, tested environment; even more so since Python has dropped backward portability. OTOH not even being able to rely on Python's presence is exactly the kind of thing that makes Python unsuitable as the shell replacement it is being promoted as.

[CameronNemo]

Installing a python interpreter is one package. If you just want to write a quick script using the standard library, it is cheap as all hell.

[Skunkleton]

Is python being promoted as a wholesale shell replacement? There certainly are plenty of overlapping usecases, but shell is a better fit for many of these tasks. Until something like ipython can replace the interactive shell, I don't see python replacing shell scripts entirely.