ABC’s This Week Panel Erupts Over Whether Republicans Are Politicizing Benghazi Attack

The panel guests on ABC News’ This Week erupted over a discussion about United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, her role in the administration’s early push to blame the September 11 attack in Benghazi on a YouTube video and Congressional Republican’s reaction to the attack in Libya. One panel guest lamented that Republicans had not rallied around President Barack Obama as Democrats did around Ronald Reagan in the wake of an attack in Lebanon. Former Mitt Romney advisor, Dan Senor, sent the panel into a frenzy when he suggested that the Reagan administration was open and transparent about the attack in Lebanon while the Obama administration has been opaque about the events that led up to the attack in Libya.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) lamented that Amb. Rice’s potential nomination to become the next Secretary of State is being scuttled due to the ongoing controversy over her role in disseminating an erroneous explanation for why that attack in Benghazi occurred.

“Talk radio is just full of Benghazi,” Cokie Roberts said. “It’s a big issue.”

Ellison went on to say that he

was disappointed the Republican party has not rallied around the president in the wake of this attack as Democrats did following the 1983 attack on a U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon.

“You didn’t see all this partisan bickering,” Ellison said. “We came together and said that this was a national tragedy. Blame was not parceled out the way it is now.”

Senor challenged Ellison’s analogy, saying that the Reagan administration handled the attack in Lebanon far differently than the Obama administration has handled Benghazi.

“Part of the problem here is in the lead up to the election, when Benghazi got a lot of attention, the president said, ‘don’t talk about Benghazi. If you do, you’re politicizing the issue,’” Senor said. “Here we are after the election and there is no full airing.”

The panel erupted at Senor’s suggestion that the White House has been less than forthright about what it knew about Benghazi.

George Stephanopoulos questioned whether it was Susan Rice’s job to be aware of the security failures that led to the attack in Libya. Former White House advisor Steven Ratner said that the questions being asked of Rice were unfair, though he thought the investigation into Benghazi was justified.

Roberts finally noted that internal politics in the Senate has resulted in several Republican and Democratic Senators pushing Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to be Sec. Hillary Clinton’s replacement. Senor said that conspiracy theories that suggest Republicans want Kerry to vacate

his seat so Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), who recently lost his bid to serve a full term to Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren, was “too much.”

Watch the clip below via ABC:

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