Democrats slam RNC for Reid memo

Democrats are furious with a Republican National Committee memo sent to 1 million members detailing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s record and accusing him of being an obstructionist to President Bush’s policies.

The Democratic leadership yesterday defended their leader and denounced the mailing as a personal attack and the “worst kind of name-calling and innuendos.” In a letter to Mr. Bush dated Wednesday and signed by all 44 Democrats and Sen. James M. Jeffords, Vermont independent, they called on the president to stop the attacks and live up to his promises of bipartisanship.

“The politics of personal destruction has got to end. The attack on Senator Reid and his family was out of bounds,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat and Democratic conference secretary.

The RNC fund-raising letter was sent out Monday and outraged Mr. Reid, who denounced the president and the Republican Party on the Senate floor.

“Last Wednesday, just a few days ago, [Mr. Bush] said he was going to reach out to Democrats. A strange way to reach out,” Mr. Reid said Monday morning in response to the mailing.

He said the mailings were an obvious pre-emptive strike and urged Mr. Bush to stop the RNC from sending such letters in the near future.”

“We haven’t dealt with one piece of legislation here on the Senate floor, and yet they’re sending out to a million people [something] to have Reid roughed up a little bit,” the Nevada senator added.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, dismissed the political wrangling and said he would make judgments on obstruction and partisan blocking based on actions.

“The fact that the Democratic leader did not agree with [the class-action reform bill] we passed today but allowed it to go to the floor in a very timely manner I think bodes well for the 109th Congress,” Mr. Frist said.

The 13-page “Reid All About It: Who is Harry Reid?” mailing was put together by the RNC research staff and contained comments made by the minority leader saying Mr. Bush’s Social Security plan would never pass the Senate, opposing the Bush administration’s ban on homosexual “marriage” and blocking the president’s judicial nominees.

It also attacks Mr. Reid’s character, drawing attention to his $750,000 downtown Ritz-Carlton condominium, painting the self-described “modest moderate” from Searchlight, Nev., as a hard-core “limousine liberal.”

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said that the tenor of politics has gotten worse and that the Democrats will not lie down as they did last year when similar attacks were levied against Sen. Tom Daschle, the former minority leader and South Dakota Democrat who lost his seat last November.

“This is a new Democratic Party,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat and chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). “When they go after one of our leaders, we fight back.”

But some Senate Republicans said the Democrats are whining about politics as usual.

“It is part of the political bump and run, that’s just the way it goes,” said Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, adding that he had not read the RNC letter about Mr. Reid.

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