Key GOP senators vow to oppose Susan Rice as Secretary of State

Senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday made crystal-clear their opposition to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as a nominee for secretary of State. Speaking at the Washington Ideas Forum, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., criticized Rice’s faulty explanation of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya.

McCain said point-blank that he would oppose the nomination of Rice to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Asked if he would do anything to block her, including filibuster, he bluntly answered “yes.”

Graham added: "I don’t trust her.”

“I think she was a political choice, telling a political narrative, and either she didn’t know the truth about Benghazi—so she shouldn’t have been on T.V.—or she was spinning it,” Graham said. He said he wouldn’t “promote” anybody involved in the “Benghazi debacle.”

“I don’t think that’s a good resume to be secretary of State,” Graham said.

Graham also told the WIF panel presented by The Atlantic and The Aspen Institute that he thinks there might be at least one Democrat who'd vote against her, but dodged the question of whether the five necessary Republicans would defect to allow her confirmation.

Speaking after the two Republicans, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said of Rice, “If the president nominates her, then she should have a hearing, and a debate in the Senate,” rather than a filibuster.