Imagine the firestorm of reaction from the MSM political pundit class if Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani had been caught on video secretly scheming to rid the Republican debates of the lower tier candidates. This would only be a prelude to the outrage that would have been expressed by the MSM if it turned out that one attempted to shift the blame on the other and the other candidate made up the lame excuse that he was really talking about breaking down the debates into smaller groups but still favored keeping all the participants. This is exactly what is happening now with Hillary Clinton attempting to shift the blame to Edwards and Edwards not very convincingly pretending he really meant to break the debates down into smaller units.

Although there has as yet been little reaction from the MSM over this incident caught on video, even the leftwing blogosphere is now reacting to the debate limit scheme in a big way. An example of this reaction can be seen in the Daily Kos where even many hardcore leftists are having a hard time swallowing the tortured but laughable explanations by Hillary and Edwards:

Up in New Hampshire yesterday, Clinton shifted responsibility for the "story" way on over to John Edwards. LOL! They way the Edwards and Clinton camps responded to the story speaks volumes. I just gotta laugh, because it's vintage Clinton chutzpah.

How about the way she just knifed edwards... I'll be thats the last time Edwards approaches her about ANYTHING.

Funny (or maybe not so much) to see Hillary blatantly lie about what happened on stage.

the fact is that Edwards DID approach her. And I don't find his explanation to be honest. I think it was CYA and not the least bit believable. Shame on them both...

Edwards did instigate the conversation not Hillary. Sometimes I am taken aback by how much people will excuse Edwards.

Where he messed up was assuming Hillary would speak about it openly and honestly if word got out. Now that he's been knifed in the back, i'm sure he will approach her with a lot more caution.

he spoke first. Did she make him says what he did? He can't slither out of the actual words he used. He can try to spin it, but he said what he meant. The both screwed up. But he spoke first.

There are scores of similar scathing comments on the Daily Kos but if you don't care to wade through all of them, the DUmmie FUnnies has a collection of the more amusing of their reactions.

Meanwhile the MSM is maintaining their collective yawn on this story. One of the rare exceptions to this ennui was the blog of Time Magazine's Washington Bureau Chief, Jay Carney, who actually agreed with the two schemers that there was a need to weed the "lower tier" candidates from their exclusive club. Unfortunately for Carney, both candidates are now pretending that purging the "lesser" candidates was not what they meant despite what we all heard on the video.

It will be interesting to see the reaction to this scheme, caught on video, by the "lower tier" candidates at the next Democrat debate. Both Dennis Kucinich and Chris Dodd have already reacted angrily. We can probably expect a very interesting reaction from Mike Gravel once he returns from his trip to the former planet Pluto.

—P.J. Gladnick is a freelance writer and creator of the DUmmie FUnnies blog.