Are their plans to have Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) who was defeated on Nov 6th, run for the Kerry Senate seat in a special election? The Governor of MA can only appoint a temporary person to fill the seat until a special election is held no fewer than 145 days, nor more than 160 days from the date of office vacancy. With that scenario, the fog from the attacks on Rice by these three Senators is clearing. Putting Party over Country is becoming a habit for the GOP in Congress.
Ambassador Jon Huntsman understands the leadership change in China has much more of an impact on the United States then the attacks in Benghazi. Shame those three are ignoring the implications of new leadership in China:
For Huntsman, the debate over who massaged what talking points and when is a distraction. While not downplaying the deaths in Benghazi, he noted that there have been other foreign policy developments in the past month that have also demanded attention.
Do I think this trio and other Republicans in the Senate would ignore what has happened in China with the change of leadership to keep attacking Susan Rice for their agenda to get Brown back in the Senate? Absolutely! Their attacks are so far over the top the three have become an embarrassment to the oaths they took as US Senators:"I heard endless chatter about Benghazi during the last several weeks and not a bit about the leadership changes in China," said Huntsman. "Now I needn't tell you which over the longer term is going to impact us as people. You've got once-per-decade leadership changes in China, whose economic and security policies will have a profound impact on the next generation of Americans."
Oath of OfficeI do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.The three have put Party over Country which we are seeing from a lot of Republicans in Congress today which is beyond disgusting. When it comes to foreign affairs, their continual attacks are harmful to how the United States is perceived in other countries. Looks like the attacks on Rice are being done by these three in order to get their way for Kerry to be named Secretary of State. The three Senators come across as mean spirited and hateful against Rice. The three know full well she did not write the talking points she used from the intelligence community when she went on television to explain what was known at the time about Benghazi. When UN Ambassador Rice and the Acting CIA Chief briefed the three yesterday, that wasn't good enough for them as they are continuing to attack.
If I was Obama, I would never put anyone in my Administration in the position of talking to those three Senators ever again. As soon as the briefing by Rice was over, the three ran to the microphone complaining about what she said. Does Ayotte know how dumb she sounds to be parroting McCain and Graham when she is a freshman Senator? Guess they had to have someone as Sen Lieberman (I-CT) broke with McCain and Graham to support Rice on her comments.
It has become more obvious that the three have an agenda because Senator Lieberman (I-CT) is perfectly fine with the explanations. The logical conclusion is the three bullies are doing this for a reason, and I would still be willing to bet it is pure politics to get Senator Kerry to become Secretary of State and Scott Brown back to the Senate. More and more people are saying the same thing after yesterday. IMO many people didn't want to think this was the case, so they didn't say much. Yesterday's remarks by the three GOP Senators immediately after their briefing by Rice finally brought out the concept that it was all about Kerry to State and Brown back to the Senate. Cannot believe after being gone for almost a week from this blog that Benghazi is even an issue.
Don't know what planet McCain, Graham, and Ayotte are living on, but the people of MA are not stupid. They see what is happening by the three. I would peg Brown being elected in a special election to the Senate as slim to none.
From reading this article about Former Governor Huntsman on Benghazi and China, I am left with the reality that I am on his side of the Republican Party with others who are fed up with what we are seeing out of Republicans today especially on foreign policy. If McCain, Graham, and Ayotte are trying to remain relevant, it is not working as they come across as arrogant and bullies against Susan Rice. They are doing the Republican Party no favors and making a lot of us question why we are Republicans if this is an example of how they are going to act in the next Congress.
Huntsman has nailed in this article what many of us are thinking. He has my vote if he decides to run for President again. Former Governor and an Ambassador to China who is not afraid to work across the aisle sounds like a great candidate. A lot of us have woken up after the election in 2012 that the GOP has gone too hard right and needs someone like Huntsman to keep the GOP from going down the path of the Whigs.
Jon Huntsman: Benghazi, Susan Rice Criticism Overblown
Posted: 11/27/2012 1:26 pm EST Updated: 11/27/2012 2:45 pm EST
WASHINGTON -- Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman on Monday urged lawmakers, including those in his own party, to temper their criticism of the administration's handling of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Huntsman, who served as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, said that it would have been nearly impossible for authorities to instantly obtain accurate intelligence about who was responsible for the September attack, which resulted in the death of four officials. Because of that, he said, recent criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for not immediately declaring the attack an act of terror was either politically motivated or misplaced.
"The issue of Benghazi, I think you can attribute to the fog of war, more than anything else," Huntsman said in an interview with The Huffington Post. "When you're in a wartime setting and you have an attack like that -- let's face it. No one is prepared for an attack like that. There is, as Robert McNamara used to say, there is a fog of war. And it takes awhile to sort through the details. And it doesn't do a whole lot of good for the political class to point fingers before you even know what was behind it. And you're not going to know that [immediately]."
In offering up his assessment, Huntsman became the rare Republican to downplay the boiling controversy surrounding the matter. Rice went to Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss her post-attack talking points with aggrieved Republican lawmakers. Early reaction suggested that she ran into a proverbial buzzsaw.
(snip)
Since then, it has become clearer that a terrorist faction in the country, believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda, was responsible for the attack. Graham, Ayotte, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have suggested that Rice deliberately changed her talking points for the political benefit of the president. But a steady stream of evidence has pointed to a more benign explanation: that the intelligence community was not immediately comfortable calling the attack an act of terrorism and couched its language accordingly.
"In the course of the meeting, we explained that the talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key respect: there was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi," Rice said in a statement. "While we certainly wish that we had had perfect information just days after the terrorist attack, as is often the case, the intelligence assessment has evolved."
Rice added that there was no intention to "mislead the American people at any stage in this process."
(snip)
Speaking from his home in Washington D.C., Huntsman called this a moment of unique, historic possibilities in U.S.-China relations. The new leader of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, has more political flexibility than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and he comes into office at a moment of acute pressure for both economic and domestic political reform, Huntsman noted.
Calling for regular head-of-state negotiations between the U.S. and China and a toning down of some of the political rhetoric -- "You can't just designate them a currency manipulator without reverberations recurring on the other end," he said -- the former ambassador outlined the obstacles ahead.
The goal for the Obama administration, he argued, is "helping China understand that in being on the world stage, there are greater expectations of the role that they will play. It is helping them understand that a weapon obtained by the Iranian government would result in tremendous instability in the region that would upend their raw material supply line. Sometimes it is walking them through things they never had to consider before because they're new to the world stage."Excerpt: Read the comments of McCain, Graham, and Ayotte at Huffington Post
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