From Henry Decker at The National Memo (where, by way of full disclosure, I’m also a fairly regular contributor)…
Last Tuesday, Cole made headlines for disagreeing with House Speaker John Boehner and advising his fellow Republicans to accept President Barack Obama’s offer to immediately extend tax cuts on incomes under $250,000, while negotiating a broader deal involving tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
During a Sunday morning appearance on ABC’s This Week, Cole offered his advice on the other issue that has animated Republicans in the weeks since the election: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s response to the September 11th attacks in Benghazi, and her potential nomination as Secretary of State.
When Dan Senor — the former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority during the Iraq War, and the chief foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney — suggested investigating “whether or not Susan Rice should be blamed†for the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attacks, Cole reminded Senor of the Bush administration’s false claims that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
“We saw President Bush out front defending something wasn’t true too,†Cole noted. “Maybe we should ask those guys some questions too.â€
…
In both cases, Cole is not adopting the Democratic position; he opposes raising tax rates for the wealthy, and he does not appear to support Rice (although he did not say whether or not he would vote to confirm her if he were in the Senate.) Instead, Cole seems to be trying to divert his party from embracing hopeless political positions. Just as Cole correctly identified that the White House has all of the leverage in the tax cut debate, so too does he seem to realize that a public battle over Rice could lead to some very uncomfortable questions about the Bush administration’s record — a history that the Republican Party would rather stay buried.
Video of the ABC This Week moment mentioned above, from 12/2/2012, follows below…
There is a Rice who ought to be investigated about remarks she made pertaining to a disastrous Middle East policy. Her full name is Condoleezza Rice.
She is the one who sought to frighten the American people to go along with an unprovoked war of aggression by claiming that we do not want the evidence of WMD to arrive by way of a “mushroom cloud.”
Susan and Condoleeza are both terrible. America’s political approach should be “no more Bushes, Clintons or Rices.” Not a cure-all, though it will be a guaranteed improvement over the last couple decades.
Susan Rice is “terrible”, why? cite facts to support your opinion please, this blog is not affiliated with FOX. Condolezza Rice and all the Neo-Cons (perlman, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, cheney and bush) would be convicted in an international court in regards to crimes against humanity..if that court used the US initiated Nurnburg trials standard…what hypocrites our rulers have become.
Dennis, Susan Rice is perpetuating many of the same war crimes as the Bush cabal. In case you haven’t noticed, the “change” we were promised looks a whole lot like “more of the same” (or, in some cases, more of the same on steroids). Her Keystone conflict of interest is also quite reflective of the same crony capitalism as the Bush gang.
And since you raised the issue, why do you think no one in this administration is going after the last?
Rice’s favorite dictators in Africa are the “Unholy Trinity†— Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and the late Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia — all former rebel leaders who seized power through the barrel of the gun and were later baptized to become the “new breed of African leaders†(a phrase of endearment coined by Bill Clinton to celebrate the “Three African Amigos†and memorialize their professed commitment to democracy and economic development). http://ecadforum.com/2012/12/09/susan-rice-and-africas-unholy-trinity/