Scandal: Hillary and Edwards caught wishing debates were ‘limited’ to certain candidates

Uh oh …:

DETROIT (AP) – Democrats John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton consider themselves among the top presidential candidates.

They were caught by Fox News microphones discussing their desire to limit future joint appearances to exclude some lower rivals after a forum in Detroit Thursday.

Edwards says, “We should try to have a more serious and a smaller group.”

Clinton agrees, saying, “We’ve got to cut the number” and “they’re not serious.” She also says that she thought their campaigns had already tried to limit the debates and say, “We’ve gotta get back to it.”

Here’s how they tried to weasel out of their comments:

In New Hampshire, Clinton seemed to lay responsibility on Edwards.

“I think he has some ideas about what he’d like to do,” she said, adding she liked participating in the forums.

For his part, Edwards told reporters in Iowa that he wasn’t in favor of barring anyone from future gatherings. Rather, he said he wanted to see them separated into two groups of four each, chosen randomly.

“The result would be that we would have a much more serious discussion and people would actually be able to see what the differences are between us,” he said.

Isn’t it typical for Hillary to blame this on someone else, even though she was clearly an equal participant in the discussion, as this video shows:

Candidate Dennis Kucinich, who presumably is one of the “unserious” candidates, is outraged:

An angry Dennis Kucinich lashed out at John Edwards on Friday, saying his Democratic rival showed “a consistent lack of integrity” by suggesting fewer candidates should participate in presidential forums and then trying to explain his remark to reporters.

“This is a serious matter and I’m calling him on it,” Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, said in a telephone interview Friday. “Whispering, trying to rig an election, then denying what’s going on and making excuses. It all reflects a consistent lack of integrity.”

[…]

Kucinich called Edwards’ explanation “disturbing” and said he planned to contact Edwards and Clinton immediately to demand an apology.

“I accept their offer to participate in a debate with just the two of them,” Kucinich said. “John should be happy with this, since he wants a small group.”

LOL. Say what you want about Dennis Kucinich, but he doesn’t back down at all.

I find this mildly humorous rather than outrageous – I’m not outraged because at some point clearly the candidates will have to be pared down to top four or five so they can have more time to explain their views (and I’m not just talking about the Democrats, either), so the desire to want to narrow down the field to the front runners is understandable, although I think that now is too soon to start narrowing down the debates to just a few candidates. What’s funny about this is that Clinton and Edwards, amongst many other prominent Democrats, have complained for years that the President and the Republican party in general likes to “shut down” or “squash” debate so that opposing views can’t be heard – they both claim to be staunch advocates of ‘letting all voices be heard’ (so they say, anyway), yet here they are whispering back and forth about wanting to narrow the field down to the ‘serious candidates’ by shutting out Kucinich and Gravel and possibly one or two others – in effect, silencing them.

As a side note, I think it’s a hoot that it was Fox News microphones that caught Hillary and Edwards’ little impromptu meeting of the minds, considering that it’s Fox News that both of them (among other candidates) have demonized as ‘unfair’ and ‘not a serious network’ and as a result backed out of two scheduled Dem presidential candidates that are both sponsored, in part, by Fox News.

Sweet.