Edwards Staffers: We Were Gonna Burn It Down for the Good of the Democratic Party

George Stephanopoulos is reporting that Edwards staffers who began to believe the rumors about their boss' infidelity had a "doomsday" strategy to destroy his campaign from the inside out if it looked like he were going to win the nomination:

They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign.

Via Twitter, Joe Trippi calls it "complete BS-fantasyland-not true."

One wonders why, if true, this story didn't come out the first time the entire nation was talking about Edwards' dalliances. Back when all the nation's Democrats were cursing Edwards and his staff for putting the nomination at risk would have been the time to reveal this tidbit, no?

Ed Morrissey asks, "Hey, why didn't you responsible staffers quit the campaign or kneecap him sooner?"

For that matter, the staffers could have leaked the story to the press. We had some indications in October 2007 that the LA Times was holding back a salacious story on one of the candidates, and everyone now assumes that was the Edwards-Rielle Hunter story. They could just have easily shopped the story to the New York Post, Washington Times, or one of the conservative political publications - or for that matter almost anywhere else in the press, which had already started fawning over Obama. Why wait until it got close? It would make more sense to kneecap Edwards quickly before it damaged the Democratic ticket entirely.