Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said Susan Rice won't win Senate confirmation as secretary of State unless the administration is more clear about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
"Frankly, if we don't get some resolution to the events of Benghazi and the death of [U.S. Ambassador to Libya] Chris Stevens, I doubt she will be confirmed," he said on CNN.
Isakson is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which would consider Rice's confirmation is she is nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Rice is seen as a front-runner for the post, but interviews she gave shortly after the Sept. 11 attack in which she suggested it had spun out of a protest have hurt her credibility with Republicans. Stevens and three others were killed in the attack.
Isakson said lawmakers should focus on how the terrorist attack developed and how best to prevent similar incidents in the future — not on comments Rice made on political talk shows.
"You don't want to shoot the messenger," said Isakson, who added that Rice was working off talking points prepared by the administration when she appeared on television.
"She read what she was told to read in those five interviews on that Sunday right after Benghazi," he said. "The first murdered ambassador since 1979. Why do we have false information and not have the intelligence we should have had? Those are answers the American people need."
Rice is headed back to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for additional meetings with Republican lawmakers.
Rice said Tuesday that she had been wrong about the cause of the violence, but was relying on talking points provided by the intelligence community and did not intend to mislead the public. But some high-level Senate Republicans, including John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), said that after meeting with Rice on Tuesday, they remained skeptical of her explanation and would not likely support her potential nomination as secretary of State.
Isakson said that he viewed Rice as "a very smart, very intelligent woman" who has done "a good job" as U.N. ambassador, but defended tough Republican questioning of Rice by saying the Obama administration had put her "on the tip of the spear."
"She's up front," Isakson said. "Quite frankly, no one else has come forward in the administration. I give the president credit; he said, 'Don't blame her, blame me.' That's why I'm saying he needs to give us the questions."
