Reconsidering Rice

>>> u.n. ambassador and secretary of state front-runner susan rice on capitol hill today meeting with two more republican senators. susan collins from the armed services committee and bob corker of the foreign relations committee . following the meeting, senator collins echos the comments of colleagues that met with rice, she expressed concern of how the events played out in benghazi before and after the september 11th consulate attacks. the senator also weighed in on her choice to replace hillary clinton and it's not susan rice .

>> i think john kerry would be an excellent appointment and would be easily confirmed by his colleagues.

>> following his meeting, senator corker called on the president to reconsider nominating rice.

>> all of us here hold the secretary of state to a very different standard than most cabinet members . there's a handful of people that the president surrounds himself with that all of us hold to a very different level and secretary of state no doubt is one of those.

>> so let's put this through the spin. s.e.?

>> yeah, i mean, my focus on susan rice is a little different. i know our last guest dana mill bank, maureen dowd made the leap susan rice is not qualified to be nominated. i'm more interested in getting the bottom of the benghazi situation and there are still too many questions. and the timeline i've been following since its inception was the negligence in securing the base before the attack, the incompetence surrounding the attack on that day and then the possible duplicity after the attack. and the duplicity angle is less important to methane the incomp hence angle. i don't want it to happen again. unfortunately, president obama puts susan rice in a position to be the gateway to a lot of these questions. obama wasn't on the sunday shows. hillary clinton wasn't on the sunday shows. and as much as daryl issa and john mccain have been trying to get answers from the fbi and the cia and the intelligence committee and all of those other things, we have to go through susan rice . before we can work on preventing this from happening again, we have to agree on what exactly happened. and we don't fully know and we need to find out.

>> i appreciate a lot of your position. if this was really about consulate security and what happened that day for a lot of these people, i would find that extremely valid. these are important questions. nobody wants this to happen again. it is completely a tragedy. but what we have is talking point police attacking susan rice because of what she said on the shows. look. they -- all these senators know the intelligence that she got. they know she was briefed by the intelligence community to say this. they know there's no duplicity. she was told what to say and whatnot to say. there's this bizarre kabuki theaters a foekt this. if it's above politics, it's attacking obama and the intelligence community . susan rice is not the doorway in to that. obama who stood up and said i'm where the buck stops. attack me. we are not going to do this.

>> obama doesn't show up at the hearings.

>> but obama is where the buck stops so if you have a problem, these senators have classified access. they know susan rice did not lie and look. the losing party does not get to determine who gets in to the cabinet so i'm not interested that they think john kerry would have an easier time.

>> what i would say just from a tactical standpoint, i think the focus on susan rice and the performance on sunday talk shows has sort of undermined the deeper more important questions as you point out, s.e. on this. but