Durbin blames ‘right wing’

The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate yesterday blamed “the right wing” and elements of the press “in service to it” for repeating Howard Dean’s remarks about Republicans and inflating them out of proportion.

“I think we all understand what’s happening with you all,” said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s blaming a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for her husband’s legal-ethical woes.

“The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody’s got the agenda. It’s all about Howard Dean. You’ve bought into it,” Mr. Durbin said.

“You can’t let up on it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Mr. Dean, who took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee four months ago, has caused a stir with a string of public statements that he “hates the Republican Party and everything it stands for” and that its members are “liars,” “evil,” “corrupt” and “brain-dead.”

Senate Democrats emerged from a Capitol Hill meeting with Mr. Dean, a former Vermont governor, yesterday touting their message of the day: Change the subject.

“As all of you know, there isn’t a single person, whether it’s any of us in this room or Governor Dean or [Republican National Committee chairman Ken] Mehlman, that haven’t misspoken,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said at a photo opportunity with Mr. Dean in his Senate office before that meeting.

“We’re here today to talk about the American people,” he said. “We’re talking about common-sense reforms for the issues that they care about.”

Mr. Dean echoed both Mr. Reid’s and Mr. Durbin’s complaints, telling reporters before the meeting: “We’re not going to let the Republicans set the agenda, and to be quite honest, we aren’t going to let you set the agenda.”

He called the fallout over his comments “a media circus” and “exactly what the Republicans want.”

“The truth is that we need to focus on exactly the issues that Harry Reid just talked about, and we’re going to,” he said.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, sought to distance herself from Mr. Dean’s comments.

“Any one of us at any given time may say something that might not be acceptable to another part of the party,” Mrs. Pelosi said. “I don’t associate myself with what he said. I think that it probably was said in the exuberance of the moment.”

Nearly every high-profile speech that Mr. Dean has delivered in his brief tenure as chairman of the Democratic National Committee has caused a stir.

In February, he told the Congressional Black Caucus that the Republican Party “couldn’t get this many people of color in a single room” unless “they had the hotel staff in here.” And on Monday told a gathering of California journalists that the Republican “party is basically a white, Christian party,” a remark he defended on NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday morning.

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