WASHINGTON -- Howard Dean's recent spate of verbal zingers has fellow Democrats wringing their hands, while generating a big shrug from the Democratic National Committee chairman himself.

The latest flap came when Dean said of the Republican Party on Monday, "It's pretty much a white, Christian party." The comment drew fire from Dean's GOP opponents, but it also rankled Democrats, who have been nervous ever since the outspoken former Vermont governor and presidential candidate won the DNC post.

Although many admire Dean's fund-raising and party-building skills, they worry about his penchant for red-hot rhetoric. Last week, Dean said of Republicans, "A lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives." Earlier, he suggested that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, now under an ethics cloud, ought to return to Houston to serve jail time.

But the Christian comment has the potential of repelling millions of voters, and it had many Democrats running for cover. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters yesterday, "I don't think the statement [Dean] made was a helpful statement" and attributed it to "the exuberance" of being in the job.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who chairs the House Democrats' campaign committee, said he would prefer that Dean pick different targets. "There's plenty of things to talk about -- sweetheart deals to tobacco, pharmaceutical industry, big oil," Emanuel said, naming a few industries that he and other Democrats criticize the GOP for coddling. Democrats "don't need gratuitous hits," he said.

A few Democrats spoke in Dean's defense, saying the Republicans were bound to jump on every blunt utterance. "It's a diversion from the real, central issues," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Dean's assessment is similar to Kennedy's. "They're trying to make me the issue," he told NBC's "Today" show yesterday. Typically, Dean refused to back down. He noted that he himself is a white Christian. And he cited a recent editorial commentary by former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., an Episcopalian minister, who wrote, "Republicans have transformed our party into the political wing of the Christian conservatives."

The chairman's popularity with the Democratic base has made some of Dean's critics think twice.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential candidate, said of Dean at a Nashville fund-raiser Saturday night: "He's a voice. I don't agree with it." Yet an online Web log for the DNC on Monday featured an entry from Edwards' own blog emphasizing their common beliefs. "We both agree with this basic truth: This Republican president and this Republican majority are not doing what they should be doing for working people in this country," the entry read. "Howard and I have been saying the same thing about this for years. Hear that? The same thing. For years."

Democrats are playing into Republicans' hands by allowing Dean to distract them, some party strategists say. "It seems to me that the shots at the chairman from Democratic elites says more about our party, sadly, than it does about Chairman Dean," said Jim Jordan, a Democratic consultant who has advised Dean. "Not much of a mystery, really, why we're the minority party," he groused.