John Edwards has criticized Hillary Clinton for being inconsistent in her positions and debate answers, and she certainly has earned that criticism. But Edwards, who ran as a sunny moderate in 2004 but is running as the angry left nutroots candidate this time, isn't really the guy to make the criticism. He demonstrated his disingenuous phoniness again last night in an appearance on the nutroots cable network, MSNBC --

Angry Left mouthpiece Keith Olbermann opened his hard-hitting questioning of John Edwards with:

The American people today are rising up, demanding to know how at least one Democrat somehow slipped through the system last night. I'll resist the temptation to ask you that question about how the Republicans can answer al Qaeda if they can't answer a Democrat, instead, can you tell us for the record whether you have any contingency plans if, heaven forbid, some time in the future, someone who's not a Democrat, even maybe an actual registered Republican, were somehow able to ask you a question?

Pretty funny, and hypocritical, from Kooky Keith, who can't seem to ever find anyone who disagrees with him to come on his little show. (Unlike Keith's nemesis Bill O'Reilly, it should be noted, who has liberals/Democrats on his show almost every night.)

Edwards answered, playing along:

Heaven forbid, I mean, how could we possibly survive if somebody who is antagonistic or has a different point of view than you do asks you a question, and no, we can't possibly expect somebody who answers questions from either independents or the other party to get elected President of the United States. How could anybody be ready to do that?

But just earlier this year, Edwards didn't find the idea of running scared and hiding from those he thinks are his ideological opponents so ridiculous.

Edwards in March 2007:

Edwards to Skip Nevada Debate Hosted by Fox

Former Sen. John Edwards campaign announced that he will skip the Nevada Democratic Party's planned August presidential debate, the latest fallout from the party's decision to have the Fox Network host the event.

The move sparked an outcry, particularly among liberals and activist bloggers, who accused Fox of being too sympathetic to Republicans and demanded that the Democratic candidates boycott the forum.

...

Edwards, who has stepped up his efforts to court liberals in the current race after being his party's vice presidential nominee in 2004, became the first to bow out of the debate this week. His deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, sent an email Tuesday to the blog DailyKos that said Edwards will appear at numerous Nevada events, but not the Fox debate

Maybe next time Keith will be slightly more "fair and balanced" and asked Edwards a follow-up: "if you can't face Chris Wallace or Brit Hume, how can you face al Qaeda?" Yeah, right.

Of course this issue Republicans have with the CNN debate is not any reluctance to answer questions from Democrats. They answer questions from Democrats all the time - practically every time an MSM reporter asks them a question.