Senate Minority Leader Won’t Call on Sen. Reid to Step Down

By Devin Dwyer
@devindwyer
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ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf reports: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined today to join Republicans in  criticizing the Majority Leader, Harry Reid, for controversial comments he made to journalists about Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. Several ranking Republican have said Reid’s comments show a double standard on the issue of race and called on Reid to step down as Majority leader.  But McConnell, amid repeated questioning at a press conference on Capitol Hill did not join the chorus. He called Reid’s status “an issue for the Democratic conference.” Later, he rephrased: “Who is going to be Democratic leader is up to the Democratic conference. ” McConnell would also not address whether there is a double standard on race for Republicans versus Democrats. Trent Lott was forced to step down as Senate Majority Leader after he said at a birthday celebration for then-Sen. Strom Thurmond that the country would have been better off if Thurmond had won the Presidency in 1948. Thurmond ran on a segregationist Dixiecrat ticket that year. Reid described Obama’s allure to a white voters because of his skin tone a lack of a “negro dialect.” The man who now hold’s Lott’s Senate seat, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss, also shied away from criticizing Reid for his remarks about Obama’s race. “It is a lot more concerning that Sen. Reid was the guy a couple of years ago who said the war in Iraq was lost,” said Wicker. Reid’s fate will be up to voters in Nevada, he said. The comments were made at a press conference about the Republican Senators’ recent trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan. On that topic, McConnell and Wicker called on President Obama to loosen his target of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan by the summer of 2011.  McConnell said that target date sends a message to officials in the region that the US is not committed to finishing the job of securing Afghanistan against al Qaeda. And McConnell also called on President Obama to change his detainee policy. McConnell said in one conversation with a general the general had to consulat a military lawyer before answering a question about detainee policy. “This preoccupation with prisoner’s rights,” said McConnell, referring both to Afghanistan and the domestic terror attempt on Christmas Day last year, is “consuming the administration.”