There are other reasons to go after U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice than for her statements about the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, Joe Scarborough suggested Wednesday.
“…whether she even has the temperament to be secretary of state. That’s a big question in Washington D.C,” he said during a discussion on how Republican Sens. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and Lindsey Graham are handling Rice’s comments about the origins of the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Scarborough suggested that some Democrats have stated that they privately question whether Rice has the temperament for the job, which President Obama seeks to nominate her.
Maureen Dowd wondered as much this morning. However, Harold Ford Jr., former chair of the Democratic Leadership, defended Rice in a later appearance and said that he believed she qualified for the position.
Host Mika Brzezinski also wondered if the three GOP Senators weren’t attacking Rice for political reasons, adding that McCain, Ayotte, and Graham have perhaps lived to regret things they’ve said on Sunday political talk shows.
Scarborough also mentioned Colin Powell’s address to the U.N. security council: “Did John McCain say that Colin Powell was unfit to continue as Secretary of State after the information that he gave before the U.N. that led us into the Iraq War? Did that make Colin Powell unfit to be Secretary of State or was Colin Powell given bad intel? I never heard him say that. I never heard Lindsey Graham say that. Same thing with Condoleeza Rice. She gave bad information to Congress. Not just to a Sunday talk show, but to Congress!” Amb. Rice also met today with moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who echoed her GOP peers: Collins said she was “very troubled by the fact that we seem not to have learned from the 1998 bombings of two of our embassies in Africa at the time when Ambassador Rice was the assistant secretary for African affairs. Those bombings in 1998 resulted in the loss of life of 12 Americans as well as many other foreign nationals.” To the GOP members remaining skeptical over Rice because of Benghazi, Scarborough asks: “What’s their long game? What are they doing? This doesn’t help the Republican Party.”
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