Howard Dean, while speaking at a breakfast in West Hollywood for a gay rights group, suggested that the Democratic Party will use the Terri Schiavo incident to define the stances of the two major parties.

Dean has taken some, but far less than the normal Dean level, of criticism over this comment and has made no move to clarify. It sounds as though he meant for this to be an issue useful for taking back the ‘moral values’ that many Democrats are talking about since the 2004 election.