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The Cycle Repeats
Author: BobR    Date: 12/14/2012 14:06:05

Ever since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her intention to step down at the end of the president's first term, there has been a major bru-ha-hah over her potential replacement. UN Ambassador Susan Rice was the presumptive nominee. Senator John Kerry's (D-MA) name was also mentioned. As soon as Kerry's name was added to the list, it became pretty clear that HE was the one the Republicans wanted, so that they would have a shot at his senate seat. As such, Ms. Rice became a target of relentless nit-picking and fake outrage.

The badgering worked. Susan Rice withdrew her name from consideration yesterday via a letter written to the White House. She wanted the job and President Obama wanted to give it to her, but she felt the negatives of the confirmation process from the Senate would be too disruptive to the president. He could ignore this and nominate her anyway, but it's unlikely he would do so.

Once again, the Republicans have taken a fairly non-political and routine process, and politicized it. Rice was criticized for passing along the information she was given by the CIA. The CIA was withholding info for security reasons. Somehow, then, it's her fault for "lying" to the American people. This is a prime example of how Republicans use fake outrage to get what they want.

It's sad that a supremely qualified candidate that wants the position has to pull herself out of the running. What's equally sad is that people on the left will blame President Obama for this. I heard Dan Rather do exactly that on the Rachel Maddow Show last night. That meme is starting to creep into the media already:
For all the high-minded niceties offered publicly, a genuine frustration could be felt below the surface. Not just from Rice's defenders, who had spent weeks yearning for the White House to push back more forcefully against her critics, or from Democrats, who wanted Obama to go forward with the nomination and make an example out of those pledging to block her appointment.

Others are being more direct:
Close watchers of Washington's national security politics waited to see what Obama would do. A relatively minor Capitol figure had taken a hard shot at the president: Would the White House come back at him, or would it accommodate and backpedal? Obama's silence was, in the longstanding view of some inside and outside the administration, the first in a series of retreats that would mark the first-term national security policy, which left Guantanamo Bay open and terror suspects outside the federal court system.

"Susan Rice is essentially a repeat of Gitmo in 2009," a former Obama administration official emailed moments after Susan Rice withdrew her name for secretary of state Thursday afternoon. "You have to give up on her because the politics are so bad that the White House thinks it can't win. But the politics are so bad because they spent too long not fighting for it and instead just watching things get worse. Self-fulfilling."

Once again, the blame for the actions of the Republicans is falling on President Obama's shoulders.

Watch for it.
 

126 comments (Latest Comment: 12/15/2012 05:51:52 by Raine)
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