Republican Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Bob Corker (TN) said after their meetings with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice on Wednesday that they will wait to judge her potential nomination for Secretary of State and will give any nominee a “full hearing” without making any “premature” statements. The senators’ comments stand in contrast to those made by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who on Tuesday pledged to place a hold on Rice bid for Secretary of State should she be nominated.

Collins told reporters today that it would be “premature” to reach a “judgment now” on Rice. The Republican from Maine, who rebuffed Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) request to create a Watergate-style investigative committee on Benghazi, said she still needs “additional information” before she “could support her nomination” for Secretary of State. Corker said in a separate press conference that whomever is nominated as the nation’s top diplomat, he’ll “give that person a full hearing, as I always do.” Watch clips from the press conferences here:

This isn’t the first group of Republican Senators to separate themselves from McCain’s plan to block Rice, or any nominee, and instead promise to grant a full and fair hearing. Indeed, Sens. Marco Rubio (FL) and Rand Paul (KY) stated that they would not pre-judge any potential nominee for Secretary of State and would instead focus on a full hearing.

A Republican senator on Wednesday praised U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice during an interview on CNN, saying Rice is a “very smart, very intelligent woman” and that she shouldn’t be held responsible for the misleading information she presented on the Benghazi terror attacks during her Sept. 16 Sunday show appearances.

Republicans led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had led an all out assault on Rice over the past several weeks, suggesting that she deliberately misled the American people when she said the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans was sparked by a demonstration against an anti-Islam video (Rice said yesterday that there was no demonstration). Because of the dust-up, McCain called Rice “not very bright” and a group of House Republicans called her “incompetent.”

But Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) doesn’t believe that to be the case. While Isakson told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien this morning that the administration needs to answer questions about what happened in Benghazi, he added, referring to Rice, “what you don’t want to do is shoot the messenger.” Rice “is a very smart, very intelligent woman. I know this Ms. Rice, I think she’s done a good job as Ambassador to the U.N.,” Isakson said:

ISAKSON: Well if she is then she come before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We’ll get the answers to questions and quite frankly, if we don’t get some resolution for the questions regarding Benghazi and the death of Chris Stevens, then I doubt very seriously that she would be confirmed but if we get the truth – what you don’t want to do Soledad is shoot the messenger. She read what she was told to read on those days and those five interviews on that Sunday right after Benghazi. …

She’s become the focal point because she was put on the tip of the spear by the administration. She is a very smart, very intelligent woman. I know this Ms. Rice, I think she’s done a good job as Ambassador to the U.N.

Watch the clip:

Indeed, on Sept. 16, Rice presented information given to her by the intelligence community, talking points that were approved by the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA and she consistently made it clear that what she was presenting were only initial conclusions and could still change. While some of those talking points turned out to be inaccurate, there is no evidence she intentionally gave false information. “Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in the process,” she said.

Isakson isn’t the first Republican senator to stray from McCain’s attack lines on Susan Rice. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) pushed back against McCain’s call for a Watergate-style committee to investigate the Benghazi incident.

And McCain’s top Senate ally Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) agreed with Chambliss and yesterday had differed with the Arizona Republican after conducting separate private meetings with Rice. While McCain and his allies said the meeting left them more “disturbed” about Rice and Benghazi, Lieberman offered a more favorable opinion. “I felt that she was telling me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Tuesday blasted three key Republicans who are attacking U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi incident. After facts trickled out about the Benghazi attacks trickled out in prior weeks that undermined their attacks on Rice, the senators, John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), seemed to back away from going after Rice.

But after their private meeting with the U.N. Ambassador, McCain, Graham and Ayotte came out swinging, claiming that Rice should have either disregarded talking points the intelligence community gave her for her Sept. 16 Sunday show appearances, or not said anything at all about the attacks given that some of the information given her turned out to be inaccurate.

Reid, in a statement released yesterday evening, shot back:

“The personal attacks against Ambassador Rice by certain Republican senators have been outrageous and utterly unmoored from facts and reality. I am shocked that senators would continue these attacks even when the evidence – including disclosures from the intelligence community about the information she presented – have made it clear that the allegations against Ambassador Rice are baseless, and that she has done absolutely nothing wrong.

“Ambassador Rice’s service as United States Ambassador to the United Nations has been impeccable. She has answered all questions raised in relation to the Benghazi attacks completely and repeatedly. The Senate committees of jurisdiction are in the midst of examining the events leading up to the Benghazi attacks, and I agree with those – including the ranking Republican members of both the Intelligence and Homeland Security committees – who have said we should let the committees do their work. There should be no place for such blatant partisanship in oversight of our nation’s intelligence community.

“The election is over. It is time to drop these partisan political games, and focus our attention on the real challenges facing us as a nation.”

Reid warned McCain earlier this month to quit politicizing the Benghazi attacks after Arizona Republican called for a Watergate-style special committee to investigate the administration’s response. “There is no evidence that any crime was committed,” Reid said.

McCain, his Republican allies and Fox News have been pushing baseless conspiracy theories on the Benghazi attacks, primarily that Rice and other Obama administration officials were involved in a “cover up.” Senior intelligence official debunked McCain’s latest charge — that the White House had changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points for political purposes — and it seemed like he would back off. But now McCain is back at it and even some of his best friends in the Senate refuse to sign on.

Emerging from talks with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, Senate Republicans have a new line of attack on Libya: if it was unclear what happened in Benghazi, why say anything at all in the aftermath?

The newest salvo comes from Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) after a very short-lived detente with the Obama administration on the response to the Sept. 11 assault in Libya.

The three met with Rice behind closed doors on Capitol Hill today and emerged with a new attack campaign, declaring that they only had “more questions” about what the administration knew and when.

“The American people got bad information on Sept. 16,” Graham said during a press conference today, referring to Rice’s Sept. 16 appearances on the Sunday talk shows. “And the question is ‘Should they have been giving information at all?’ If you can give nothing but bad information, isn’t it better to give no information?”

Rather than acknowledging that the intelligence community had vetted and aided in the drafting of Rice’s unclassified talking points that day, the senators in the post-meeting press conference instead chose to fault Rice for not only failing to be more critical of the assessment she was given but for not potentially revealing classified information:

AYOTTE: What troubles me also, the changes made to the unclassified talking points were misleading. But just to be clear, when you have a position where you’re Ambassador to the United Nations, you go well beyond unclassified talking points in your daily preparation and responsibilities for that job. And that’s troubling to me as well, why she wouldn’t have asked “I’m the person that doesn’t know about this, I’m going on every single show?” But in addition, it’s not just the talking points that were unclassified, but clearly it was part of her responsibility as Ambassador to the United Nations to review much more than that.

Ayotte’s determination echoes a growing belief among the right-wing that Rice should have “known better” than to take the talking points provided by the intelligence community at face value or that she should have divulged material that was classified at the time to the American people.

But this brand-new determination that Rice should have strayed from the talking points given to her on Sept. 16 has already spread among the GOP. Senate Minority Whip John Kyl (R-AZ) called Rice a “puppet” of the administration in an interview with National Review Online:

“Is she such a puppet that she had no questions about the information she was given?” Kyl asks, in an interview at Newseum, where he is participating in the Foreign Policy Initiative’s annual forum. “What she said was deceptive, misleading, and wrong.”

However, during the five interviews she gave on Sept. 16, Rice consistently made clear that what was being presented were only initial conclusions and could still change. While the facts continue to exonerate Rice and the Obama administration on this issue, in the face of continual shouting by conservatives that a conspiracy of some sort took place surrounding Benghazi, the majority of Americans believe that’s not the case.

A new CNN poll has found that a majority of Americans do not think the Obama administration intentionally misled the public in explaining what happened in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on U.S. assets in Benghazi, Libya in September.

Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and Fox News have been engaged in an all out attack campaign against U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and other Obama administration officials to try to convince Americans that the White House was trying to execute a Watergate-style cover up of the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks. But the CNN poll has found that it failed:

On Libya, 54% of the country is dissatisfied with the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, with only four in ten saying they’re satisfied with the way the White House handled the matter.

“But that dissatisfaction is not because Americans see a cover-up,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Only 40% believe that the inaccurate statements that administration officials initially made about the Benghazi attack were an attempt to deliberately mislead the public. Fifty-four percent think those inaccurate statements reflected what the White House believed to be true at the time.”

News of the CNN poll comes as Rice will meet today with McCain and two other Republican senators who have been most vocal in attacking the U.N. ambassador on Libya, Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH).

McCain vowed to block Rice’s potential nomination as the next Secretary of State but has since backed away from that pledge after facts emerged to undermine his claim that Rice and Obama administration officials lied about Benghazi. McCain said on Sunday that he would give Rice the “benefit” of explaining her position. But the Washington Post reports that Ayotte is still holding out . “I would hold the [Rice] nomination until I got sufficient answers,” Ayotte said.

Shortly after news broke about a fatal attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Obama of “sympathiz[ing] with those who waged the attacks.” And Romney continued to make Benghazi-related attacks a centerpiece of his campaign even after his efforts were debunked and widely condemned.

Mitt Romney lost. But that has not prevented Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) from picking up this torch. Shortly after Romney conceded his loss earlier this month, McCain set his sites on UN Ambassador Susan Rice, a likely nominee to succeed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Pointing to several television appearances where Rice communicated the intelligence community’s as-yet imperfect understanding of what happened during the Benghazi attacks, McCain promised that “I will do everything in my power to block her from becoming Secretary of State.”

On Fox News Sunday this morning, however, McCain sang a much more conciliatory tune, backing off his hardline opposition to Rice:

HOST: You say that you will do everything in your power to block Susan Rice’s nomination if the President decides to name her to be secretary of state . . . . Is there anything that Ambassador Rice can do to change your mind?

MCCAIN: Sure, she can give everyone the benefit of explaining their position and the actions that they took. And I’ll be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her. Why did she say that al Qaeda has been decimated in her statement here on this program? Al Qaeda hasn’t been decimated. They’re on the rise. They’re all over Iraq.

Watch it:

If McCain isn’t sure why Rice said that al Qaeda has been decimated, he may want to ask Osama bin Laden. When he fails at that, he can then ask the National Counterterrorism Center, which found that “a 16 percent drop in successful attacks by the al Qaeda network; a 65 percent drop in successful attacks by the al Qaeda network outside Africa; and a 35 percent drop in casualties caused by al Qaeda” in just the period from May 2011 until May 2012. Twenty-two senior-level al Qaeda operatives and leaders were captured or killed in the same one year window.

Regardless, hopefully today’s more conciliatory statement is a sign that McCain will back off his efforts to inject partisan politics into our nation’s security.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Prime Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr today announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, ending eight days of violence that resulted in nearly 150 dead and more wounded. President Obama dispatched Clinton to the region yesterday and the nation’s top diplomat traveled to Jerusalem and Cairo today to help facilitate the deal.

But in a statement on the Gaza ceasefire today, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) — one day after intelligence officials debunked their attacks on the Obama administration over Benghazi — didn’t have any kind words for the president and his team. In fact, the new “Three Amigos” attacked Obama, saying there needs to be “smarter American leadership” in the Middle East.

Yet the three Republicans did have praise for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi:

We commend Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for the role they played in reaching today’s ceasefire. We also are encouraged by the responsible leadership role played by the President of Egypt and his government. President Morsi deserves credit for successfully bringing an end to the violence and preventing further loss of life on both sides. These actions are befitting the commitment to peace and security that Egypt has traditionally upheld as a leader of the Arab world.

Indeed, Netanyahu, Morsi and others involved ending the hostilities deserve credit — but so does the Obama administration. And given their embarrassing campaign to bring down the Obama administration on Libya, it’s not entirely shocking that McCain and his allies don’t see it that way.

The Republicans’ new focus of attack in the faux “Benghazi-gate” scandal is Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, claiming that he lied about the source of changes to talking points on the Benghazi attack given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Yesterday, a DNI spokesperson debunked accusations made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republicans that the White House changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points, saying that it was the intelligence community that made the “substantive” changes to the talking points. Moreover, former CIA head David Petraeus and other top intelligence officials have said there was no politicization of the process and that the talking points were not altered to minimize the role of extremists but to reflect the best intelligence at the time.

McCain appeared to accept the new information but wondered why Clapper and other DNI officials did not provide this information during closed door hearings last week. And now that all their earlier attacks on Rice have fell apart, Republicans and conservative media figures are directing their attacks at Clapper, a George W. Bush appointee:

– BILL O’REILLY: Now it’s James Clapper, President Obama’s national security guy who is saying, “Oh, it’s me. I sent Rice out there and I took out all the al Qaeda stuff.” I’m not buying it. None of this adds up. … All right so there’s a lot of lying going on here.

– CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I’m not buying it because the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that a week ago in classified testimony that same Clapper said that they had no idea who changed the talking points and now a week later he seems to say he did? That’s kind of strange. I mean I’ve seen amnesia in my day in my clinical days and that one is pretty quick, one week.

– TUCKER CARLSON: I hate to think that the director of National Intelligence lied, is a liar. But I’m not sure I see an alternate explanation. Apparently, he’s contradicting what he testified to just last week. Is there another explanation for this?”

– FOX NEWS’ STEVE DOOCY: They did say it is out of the [DNI] office. It’s not him per se, so we’re supposed to believe that a Clapper aide changed what Petraeus had said? That’s very, very curious.

– REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC): This is the head of our national intelligence and he changed his mind within the course of 24 hours. So how are you possibly going to have any confidence in what he says?

And while Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) didn’t call Clapper a liar, he told Fox News’ Stuart Varney that he now might be involved in the alleged cover up:

GINGREY: Now have you got someone who basically can trump the CIA, especially if the president says to him — I am not suggesting that he did, but he could have — look, James, we need to kind of clean this up a little bit.. We are doing really well. We’re right about time for the election and we are doing very well on national security and this could blow our cover.

Watch the video compilation of the attacks against Clapper:

The right wing has spent months trying to bring down the Obama administration in politicization the attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead and after all of their conspiracy theories and baseless attacks have been debunked, the rabbit hole appears to have led to Clapper and who knows where it will end.

An American official involved in formulating and editing U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s talking points on the Benghazi attack told the Los Angeles Times that they were not edited for political reasons or to avoid undermining the Obama administration’s narrative that it has severely diminished al Qaeda’s capabilities.

Former CIA director David Petraeus said last week that the CIA believed al Qaeda was responsible for the attack but that assessment was later taken out of Rice’s talking points after an interagency review, Petraeus said, to deemphasize al Qaeda’s role in the Sept. 11 Benghazi assault in favor of a more general assessment that “extremists” carried out the attack.

Republicans led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) then accused the White House of making the change to bolster President Obama’s political standing during an election season. “[Rice's] talking points came from the White House, not from the DNI,” McCain charged last week, referring to the Director of National Intelligence.

Even though Petraeus reportedly told lawmakers that the CIA approved the changes and “there was no politicization of the process,” a CNN report on Monday further debunked McCain’s theory. Intelligence officials said that the intelligence community, not the White House, had changed the talking points. And today, the Times backed that story up with more reporting based on information from “senior” intelligence sources involved saying that none of the edits were made for political reasons:

“Early drafts of the talking points included several analytic judgments that were debated and adjusted during the internal intelligence community coordination process,” said the senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue involved classified material. “The adjustments were focused on producing talking points that provided the best information available at the time, protected sensitive details and reflected the evolving nature of rapidly incoming intelligence.”

Officials at the CIA and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by James R. Clapper, “were all communicating on an email chain, which is normal in our coordination process,” the official said. “Suggestions were being made and implemented in a collaborative manner.”

The CIA drafted the initial talking points, and they were not “edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack,” said a second U.S. official familiar with how the material was edited

McCain has been attacking Rice for weeks, a campaign that escalated recently to vowing to “block” her potential nomination as the next Secretary of State. But the Arizona Republican appears to be backing off. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and other senators friendly to McCain smacked down his request for a “Watergate-style” investigation into Benghazi. And yesterday, in a statement released after CNN’s report that the White House was not the office that changed Susan Rice’s talking points, McCain didn’t take issue with those facts and instead complained that he didn’t have this information sooner.