Susan Rice Takes Herself Out of the Running for Secretary of State

     The question begs is what happened? Did Obama wilt in the face of a bruising confirmation process? Did McCain and company sink her candidacy? Greg Sargent is certainly right that we should not jump to conclusions.

     "I’d caution everyone to wait a bit before drawing any firm conclusions about what happened here. We don’t know she was Barack Obama’s first choice. We don’t know, if she was the top choice, why she didn’t wind up the pick. If outside objections mattered — say, from John McCain — we don’t know which ones mattered, and it’s not necessarily the loudest ones."

    "Absolutely everyone who voiced any objection (conservative lawmakers and media, for instance) will have an interest in claiming that he or she was the one who derailed the nomination. Doesn’t make it true."

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2012/12/13/dont-jump-to-conclusions-about-susan-rice/

     As Sargent says we don't know what happened. For that matter we don't know that the President asked her to take herself out of consideration: she claims she didn't want the President to waste political capital. The one thing that would be bad is if Obama backed off simply out of not wanting a tough fight with Republicans:

   "All that said: if Obama backed off of Rice purely because he was afraid of a fight with Republicans, it’s probably a poor choice…although it depends, a bit, on whether he had counted the votes and knew she couldn’t get confirmed, as opposed to simply wanting to avoid a messy but successful confirmation."

    Agreed. Obama has a lot of political capital and certainly don't want to think that he'd fold on the first big battle he'd face.  From what we're hearing from within the Administration this is emphatically not the case:

    "President Barack Obama was prepared to battle for Susan Rice, but her withdrawal from consideration to be the next secretary of state means he won’t get a fight — over this.
Rice’s decision pre-empts what was expected to be an intense confirmation battle that could have swallowed key first months of the president’s second term – and perhaps big-ticket agenda items along with it.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/barack-obama-avoids-fight-over-susan-rice-85074.html#ixzz2F2ZXvWpM

     Many do seem to believe that while she could have been confirmed it would have taken time away from his larger agenda-this was the reason she herself gave. The White House says she was not asked to withdraw but some point out that Obama didn't specifically ask her not to.

      "White House officials say Obama had yet to settle on a replacement for departing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he had narrowed his choices to Rice and Sen. John F. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee and who is now considered likely to receive the nomination.".

      “He certainly accepted the logic that another major distraction at this point would disrupt not only our domestic agenda but also our foreign policy plans,” said the senior administration official.

      “But I think he’s angry at the way that Susan Rice was targeted for partisan attacks related to something that she essentially had no responsibility for — namely, the intelligence assessment and security at the mission in Benghazi,” the official added.

       "Many Democrats on Capitol Hill have made clear, in private, that they prefer Kerry as the next secretary of state, according to several senators and aides who requested anonymity to speak freely about the president’s choice."

       "Some worried that the fallout from the Benghazi attack could have turned Rice’s nomination into the first tough vote of the 2014 election season. Others were more concerned about having to fight for Rice as Obama also pressured Republicans to accept higher upper-end tax rates as part of a broad deficit-reduction deal."

“She could be confirmed,” said a second senior administration official, “but at a high cost.”

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-decided-that-political-capital-better-spent-elsewhere-than-on-battle-over-rice/2012/12/13/ea450546-4579-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story_1.html

     The trouble is that this doubly plays into the Republicans' hands. They declared her unacceptable ans she withdraw-albeit Sargent is right about leaping to conclusions about what happened. Still she's out as they wanted and Kerry appears to be in-which they actually really wanted as well.

     The big elephant in the room-a bigger elephant even than Rush Limbaugh-is that they have not been coy about wanting Kerry, particularly, Scott Brown. It's his ticket to another shot at coming back to the Senate.

      So you know there's some gloating in GOPLand right now. Let's just hope this is not a sign of things to come. If Obama does get some wins on the cliff and immigration-and I still expect he will-this episode will be soon forgotten. But it grates right now.