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The two angry Republican senators have been plotting for weeks to stop Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, from rising any further in the Washington firmament. On Nov. 27, their task got more complicated.

Graham, of South Carolina, and McCain, of Arizona -- joined occasionally by Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, if only to make it not seem like two men beating up on a woman -- are all aboil about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. Well, not exactly: They are upset about what Rice said about the attack on several Sunday-morning talk shows five days later.

Why are they upset at Rice and not, say, officials in charge of security at the mission? Or, if they want to go big, why not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

Probably because they wanted to go after a lesser official whom President Barack Obama would like to be secretary of state. Or because they don’t want to talk about how Republicans have consistently denied funds to protect diplomatic posts in dangerous places. Or because they don’t want to discuss how supportive they were last decade when then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell gave testimony that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Powell and Rice then, like Susan Rice now, were relying on information provided by the intelligence community. There is, however, a major difference: Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were testifying before official government bodies to justify going to war. Susan Rice was filling airtime between ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs.

Of course, all of this is just more evidence of Washington being full of itself. Only in Washington do people take seriously something said to a tiny audience of insiders half- watching their televisions on a Sunday morning. So seriously that a few senators want to embark on a special investigation beyond those already under way (hearings by congressional committees and a State Department inquiry, headed by former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and ordered by Clinton).

It doesn’t make sense unless you’re just looking for conflict or are up for re-election. As it happens, McCain, the grumpy old man of the Senate, is often spoiling for a fight, and the ally of the man who defeated him four years ago is a satisfying target. And Graham, who must face voters in the red state of South Carolina in two years, already features his dispute with Rice in campaign ads.

Then again, this story is getting pretty convoluted. It’s hard enough to know what really happened in Benghazi in September. It’s harder still to implicate Rice in some kind of cover-up. This week’s events will undoubtedly provide more fodder for another round of Sunday-morning talk shows. But the story McCain and Graham are trying to sell is getting harder and harder to swallow. More at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/the-convoluted-campaign-again
st-susan-rice.html

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Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said that Obama should nominate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to replace Sec. Clinton. Barrasso said that Kerry would be easily confirmed by the Senate should Obama nominate him over Rice.

“If the president wants an easy confirmation hearing and an easy confirmation process, what he would do is nominate John Kerry – who is eminently qualified to be Secretary of State – and I believe he would sail thorough in the nominating process,” Barrasso said.

After repeating his objections to Rice’s nomination, Barrasso reiterated that a “smooth confirmation process” to replace Sec. Clinton would be achieved by nominating Sen. Kerry. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-senator-backs-john
-kerry-for-secretary-of-state-i-believe-he-would-sail-through-the-nominating-process/

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"I think John Kerry would be an excellent appointment and would be easily confirmed by his colleagues," Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins said. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-34222_162-57555981-10391739/collins-contin
ues-attacks-on-rice-says-
kerry-would-be-excellent-secretary-of-state/

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Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the presumptive next Republican leader on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said today that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is too political and not independent enough to be secretary of state.

"I've had warm relations with Susan Rice, and to me, if you look at what happened that day, I think she would be an outstanding head of the [Democratic National Committee]," Corker told The Cable in a short interview today.More at http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/27/corker_rice_
would_make_a_better_dnc_chair_than_secretary_of_state

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