John Moore / Getty Images, file

A U.S. Border Patrol agent looks into Mexico on the border near Sonoita, Arizona. A new proposal suggests allocating $3 billion for increased surveillance and manpower along the country's southern border.

After months of negotiations, a bipartisan Senate group on Tuesday will unveil sweeping legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, an effort that has been a major focus of President Barack Obama’s second term agenda and one that some Republicans view as a political necessity.

The plan outlines an emphasis on shifting legal immigration towards more skilled workers; sets ambitious goals for surveillance and security along the nation’s southern border; and offers qualifying undocumented immigrants a decade-long process – dependent on external border security triggers -- towards legalization and eventual citizenship in the United States.

Included in the bill are the following provisions, according to a summary memo provided to NBC News:              

• Allow undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States continually since before December 31, 2011 to apply for “Registered Provisional Immigrant Status” if they pay back taxes and $500 in fines, and if they have not been convicted of a felony or 3 or more misdemeanors or voted illegally. Individuals with this status can work for any employer and travel outside the country but are not eligible to receive means-tested federal public benefits.
•  After 10 years in Registered Provisional Immigrant Status, individuals will be eligible – pending border security measures and a clearing of existing backlogs for legal immigrants – to earn a merit-based green card if they have worked in the United States, demonstrated knowledge of the English language and paid an additional fine of $1000.
• Allow eligible DREAM act applicants and certain agricultural workers to apply for green cards within five years
• Regarding border security, the bill would set a goal of “90% effectiveness” – meaning the rate of apprehensions and turnbacks of potential entrants – per fiscal year in the most high-risk areas of the southern border. If that goal is not met within five years, a bipartisan “Border Commission” made up of border state governors and experts will be formed to issue new recommendations on how to achieve it.
• Allocate $3 billion for increased surveillance and manpower along the country’s southern border and an additional $1.5 billion for fencing.
• Include a border security “trigger” requiring that no undocumented immigrant can achieve legal “Registered Provisional Immigrant” status until strategies for border security have been submitted by the Department of Homeland Security to Congress.
•  Require an additional “trigger” that prevents those with “Registered Provisional Immigrant” status from becoming eligible to apply for Lawful Permanent Resident status until the Department of Homeland Security and the Comptroller General certify that border security strategies are operational and a mandatory employment verification system has been implemented.
• Create a new “W” visa program to allow non-agricultural temporary workers to come to the United States to work for registered employers. 
•  Eliminate family-based visas for siblings of United States citizens as well as the Diversity Visa program while eliminating caps on visas for certain employment-based categories.
•  Use a point system for a new “merit based” visa, of which 120,000 would initially be awarded per year, with a maximum cap of 250,000 annually. Points will be awarded based on criteria including education, employment and length of residence in the U.S.
• Require an “enhanced E-Verify” system to prevent ineligible workers from taking jobs in the United States. Employers with more than 5,000 employees will be phased in within two years; employers with more than 500 employees will be phased in within three years.
• Raise the annual cap on H1-B visas for high-skilled workers from 65,000 to 110,000, with provisions to prevent such workers from undercutting American wages. Set a maximum cap at 180,000 such visas.

While events in Boston Monday caused organizers to postpone a planned Tuesday press conference to roll out the bill, the legislation will be formally filed in the Senate later today. Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and John McCain of Arizona will visit the White House to brief the president on the plan. 

Related:
Revealed -- a path to citizenship, shift to employment-based visas

10 things you need to know about the Senate immigration bill

Once filed, the process of examining the bill will begin in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where panel members will hold two hearings in the next week. The group is expected to continue its markup of the legislation into the month of May.

The proposal, drafted by four Democrats and four Republicans, represents the first major attempt to comprehensively address illegal immigration, border security, and the existing backlog for legal immigrants to the United States since a bipartisan bill stalled in the Senate in 2007. 

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:00 AM EDT

Highlighting the discord among Republicans over President Barack Obama’s targeted killings policy, two prominent GOP senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, took to the Senate floor to criticize Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 12-hour filibuster Wednesday. 

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., (L) and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. confer at the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington March 5, 2013.

Thirteen Republican senators – including Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and the junior GOP senators from McCain’s and Graham’s home states -- joined Paul during his filibuster to show their support for his demand that President Barack Obama explicitly say whether he thinks he has the authority to order the killing of a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil who was a noncombatant and posed no imminent threat of an attack.

Paul has delayed the confirmation of Obama’s CIA nominee John Brennan in order to dramatize his demand for an answer from Obama.

On Thursday Paul received a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder saying that the president does not have the authority "to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil."

McCain said Thursday the Senate needed to conduct hearings and an in-depth debate on Obama’s targeted killings policy, “but that conversation should not be talking about drones killing Jane Fonda and people in cafes. It should be all about what authority and what checks and balances should exist” in order to combat “an enemy that we know will be with us for a long time.”

In his filibuster Paul had approvingly quoted an article by National Review writer Kevin Williamson which said, “As satisfying as putting Jane Fonda on a kill list might have been, I don’t think our understanding of the law would have approved such a thing even though she did give communist aid to the aggressor in Vietnam (in the 1970s).”

While Paul was conducting his filibuster, McCain and Graham were among a group of Republican senators having dinner with Obama at a Washington, D.C. hotel.

Graham scoffed at Paul’s question about whether Obama thinks he has the authority to kill a noncombatant American citizen on U.S. soil.

“I find the question offensive,” Graham said Thursday on the Senate floor. “As much I disagree with President Obama and as much as I support past presidents, I do not believe that question deserves an answer.” Paul’s question, the South Carolina Republican said, “cheapens the debate.”

Graham said flatly that Obama would not use a drone against a noncombatant sitting in a café somewhere in the United States.

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But there was less of a policy split that might have appeared on the surface: Paul repeatedly said during his filibuster that the government can and should use lethal force in cases when an attack is imminent.

He cited the scenario of a terrorist who was about to attack the U.S. Capitol with a bazooka or rocket launcher, as well as similar scenarios.

But Paul said the Obama administration has not yet made clear “what rules are going to be used in America. If you’re going to kill noncombatants, people eating dinner in America, there have to be some rules. Does the Constitution apply?”

When Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday he repeatedly said the use of a drone to kill an American citizen on U.S. soil who wasn’t an imminent threat wouldn’t be an “appropriate” use of lethal force.

After repeated questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz, R- Texas, Holder finally said it would also not be constitutional. Holder said, “I thought I was saying ‘no.’ All right, no.”

In his comments on the Senate floor Thursday, Graham reprised the points he made Wednesday during the Holder hearing.

But the Paul filibuster and the excitement it generated among libertarians and Republicans has given new visibility to the discord over the targeted killings strategy and whether Obama might seek to apply it to U.S. citizen who posed an imminent threat.

Graham said to Holder, “I want to stand by you and the president to make sure we don’t criminalize the war and that the commander-in-chief continues to have the authority to protect us all.” He said “a lot of my colleagues are well-meaning but there is only one commander-in-chief in our Constitution.”

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 7, 2013 12:54 PM EST

The Senate voted to confirm former Sen. Chuck Hagel as President Barack Obama's next secretary of defense following weeks of dogged opposition by Republican senators to their erstwhile colleague.

The Senate voted 58 to 41 to formally confirm Hagel, on the heels of a procedural vote earlier in the day that cleared the way for Tuesday afternoon's final vote.

That earlier vote dispensed with a filibuster that Senate Republicans had waged for a week and a half against Hagel, whose confirmation was delayed by Republicans past the President's Day recess in order to allow for more time to dig into the former Nebraska senator's background.

A number of Republican detractors — including Sens. John McCain, Ariz., Lindsey Graham, S.C. and Kelly Ayotte, N.H. — reversed their votes on Monday in order to allow the Hagel nomination to move forward.

The Senate voted 71 to 27 to move forward with Hagel's nomination, clearing the 60-vote threshold needed to end the GOP filibuster. A handful of the Republicans who allowed Hagel's nomination to come to a final vote ultimately voted against confirmation.

In the end, Obama was able to win confirmation for Hagel, his choice to succeed outgoing Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon. But not before Republicans were able to drag out the confirmation fight and, in the process, ding Hagel, their onetime GOP Senate colleague from the Cornhusker State.

Republicans had fought strenuously to defeat Hagel, accusing him at points of harboring hostilities toward Israel, and sympathies for the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Tied into Hagel's nomination as well have been Republicans' long-running effort to ding Obama and his administration over their handling of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Senator Chuck Hagel testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to be Defense Secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, in this January 31, 2013, file photo.

"What has their filibuster gained my Republican colleagues?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asked on the Senate floor. "Twelve days later, Senator Hagel's exemplary record of service to his country remains untarnished."

Reid added: "Senate Republicans have delayed for the better part of two weeks for one reason and one reason only: partisanship."

Hagel didn't necessarily help his cause during a combative confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republicans aggressively questioned Hagel on a variety of matters during the Jan. 31 hearing. 

Even still, Democrats held firm in their backing for the former Nebraska senator, helping to move his nomination forward. Republicans, though, managed to buy themselves more time — they said, to more fully investigate Hagel's background — by waging a filibuster against the nomination on Feb. 14. 

Democrats angrily protested the delay, especially as current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta planned to leave the job, as dangerous and unprecedented. Republican opponents of Hagel, though, said at that time that they would drop their objections to holding a confirmation vote after last week's recess.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 12:37 PM EST

Fuming Arizona constituents fired criticism at Sen. John McCain over illegal immigration at town halls Tuesday.

“You said ‘build the dang fence’ – where’s the fence?” one constituent named Keith Smith demanded of McCain.

“He doesn’t want the American people to stand up and ask him the tough questions and hold his feet to the fire,” Smith told NBC affiliate KPNX.

McCain told the crowd that Americans would not support a move to arrest all illegal immigrants in the United States and deport them. He also said he wouldn’t support an effort to make people who had been in the United States illegally for decades to become guest workers because “we’re a Judeo-Christian principled nation,” drawing an angry response from some in the crowd.

McCain is a member of a bipartisan group of senators which is now working on drafting legislation akin to the bill which the Arizona senator supported in 2007, in partnership with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D- Mass. and others, to create a process for illegal immigrants to become legal permanent residents of the United States. That effort collapsed mostly due to conservative Republican opposition.

When McCain ran for re-election in 2010, he survived a challenge from a conservative, J.D. Hayworth, in the Republican priamry. And in the general election he emphasized the need for greater efforts to stop illegal immigrants from slipping over the Mexican border – rather than his previous support for a legalization process.

President Barack Obama's choice to lead the Pentagon, former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel, will likely be confirmed next week, one of his most dogged opponents said Sunday.

"I'm confident that Sen. Hagel will probably have the votes necessary to be confirmed as secretary of defense," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

After Senate Republicans voted to sustain a filibuster and block the former Nebraska senator's nomination from advancing toward confirmation, McCain acknowledged that Hagel will likely win confirmation once the chamber returns from its recess.

"I think it's a reasonable amount of time to have questions answered," McCain said of the week-and-a-half-long window which Senate Republicans demanded to pore more thoroughly over their former colleague's records.

Democrats and the Obama administration have complained that a filibuster for a defense secretary nominee is without precedent. Moreover, they argue that filling the defense post is particularly urgent given outgoing Secretary Leon Panetta's plans to leave the Pentagon, and the looming "sequester" of automatic spending cuts, which fall heavily upon the defense budget.

The administration publicly shrugged off, though, the notion that the delay had damaged Hagel's ability to serve effectively.

"No, he's not going to be a weaker defense secretary," said Denis McDonough, the president's new chief of staff, "he's going to be a great defense secretary."

Wrapped up into the GOP's objections are the desire to ding the administration, a demand for fuller answers to the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, and personal quarrels with Hagel over his criticism of President George W. Bush and the handling of the war in Iraq. McCain denied, though, that Republicans' attacks on Hagel were personal in nature.

"99 percent of it has to do with the positions Sen. Hagel has taken," he said.

The Hagel fight has consumed Congress in recent weeks, threatening to expend Obama's political capital as he enters a second term. It's yet to be seen whether this fight, and the looming fight to replace the sequester with other equivalent savings, would affect other elements of the Obama agenda — including gun control, and immigration.

Amid a New York Times report that suggested the White House had pushed ahead with its own immigration bill, McDonough said it was consistent with Obama's promise to simply be prepared with his own alternative plan. Obama, McDonough said, was still hoping that a bipartisan Senate group would be able to produce its own comprehensive immigration reform proposal.

"I believe we're making progress on a bipartisan basis," said McCain, a member of the eight-member, bipartisan Senate group working on the immigration proposal. The Arizona senator said, though, that Obama had had no communications with the Senate group.

"Does the president really want a result?" asked McCain, reflecting Republicans' concerns on the politics of immigration. "Or does he want another cudgel so he can beat up Republicans to get an advantage in the next election?"

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee to be defense secretary, on Capitol Hill, Jan. 31, 2013.

Senate Republicans on Thursday stalled further work on confirming former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., as the next secretary of defense, likely prolonging the fight over the Pentagon nominee for at least another week and a half.

The Senate voted 58 to 40 to end debate on Hagel's nomination, falling short of the 60-vote threshold they needed to move toward a final confirmation vote, and subjecting the former Republican senator to an unprecedented, de-facto filibuster. Four Republicans supported Hagel and one GOP senator voted present, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., switched his vote to "no" in a procedural move to be able to bring up Hagel's nomination at a later date.

Related: Five lessons we've learned from the Hagel fight

The vote is only a temporary setback for the White House, which still views Hagel’s eventual confirmation as a likely proposition. President Barack Obama said in a Google+ hangout shortly after the vote that his "expectation and hope" is that Hagel would eventually be confirmed.

“Senator Hagel is going to be confirmed, if not tomorrow then when the Senate returns from recess,” a White House official said Thursday. (The Senate is away from Washington next week and is scheduled to return for work as soon as Feb. 25.)

The Obama administration’s confidence is rooted in statements Thursday by a number of Republicans who have said they intend to switch their vote after the recess and support moving toward a final vote for Hagel.

The delay still incensed Democrats, though, who argued that the delay was without precedent and risked leaving the military essentially leaderless during a time of war and as major cuts to the defense budget loom. (Outgoing Secretary Leon Panetta continues to serve in his role until Hagel is confirmed, though he had intended to finish his service this week.)

"I'm going to go call Chuck Hagel when I finish here and say, 'I'm sorry,'" Reid said after the cloture vote. He set another cloture vote for Tuesday Feb. 26.

Indeed, the White House scrambled for much of the afternoon to find the handful of Republican votes that would have allowed for Hagel’s confirmation this week. They released a letter in response to GOP senators’ questions about the administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a diplomatic posting in Benghazi, Libya, and Vice President Joe Biden worked the phones in hopes of finding the necessary votes to overcome the de-facto filibuster.

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The 60-vote threshold means that Hagel’s nomination is, in effect, being subjected to a filibuster. Because Republicans are objecting to ending debate – often a formality in the Senate, where lawmakers give their “unanimous consent” to moving forward with a vote – Democrats must deliver the same 60 votes that they would need under the circumstances of a filibuster to end debate on the Hagel nomination.

Republicans argued that they were not orchestrating a formal filibuster against Hagel – a maneuver which would be unprecedented in the instance of a nominee for the secretary of defense position.

Some GOP senators – led by Sens. John McCain, Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, S.C. – said that they just needed a little more time to thoroughly vet Hagel’s background, despite having served with the former Nebraska senator during the bulk of his two terms in the Senate. Graham and McCain argued that they needed more time than the two days that have elapsed since the armed services panel approved Hagel’s nomination for consideration by the whole Senate.

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 14, 2013 4:56 PM EST

Matthias Schrader / AP

Sen. John McCain

Updated 12:52 pm ET. Always one to speak -- or Tweet -- his mind, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) Monday made a joke comparing Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a monkey, something one Republican congressman charged was “racist.”

“So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space - wasn't he just there last week?” McCain said in a tweet that also linked to a story about Iran launching a monkey into space.

Some didn’t take so kindly to the not-so-diplomatic quip, prompting McCain, 76, to respond: “Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?”

Seeing that, Michigan congressman Rep. Justin Amash, 32, shot back.

“Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes,” Amash tweeted.

Not everyone on the right agreed with Amash. Conservative John Podhoretz, for example, Tweeted this: "How dare McCain say something demeaning & disparaging abt the foremost anti-Semite on the planet." And this: "So...it's defend-the-Jew-hater-from-the-war-hero day." 

It’s not the first time McCain’s made a joke about Iran that landed him in some hot water. During his run for president in 2007, McCain sang about bombing the country.

Asked by a GOP primary voter when the U.S. would send an “air-mail message to Tehran,” McCain said, “That old Beach Boys’ song, ‘Bomb Iran?’ Bomb, bomb, bomb—, anyway.”

McCain’s response then as now? It’s just a joke -- "get a life.”

“When veterans are together, veterans joke,” McCain said at the time. “And I was with veterans and we were joking. And if somebody can’t understand that, my answer is, ‘Please, get a life.’”

A bipartisan group of senators formally unveiled an immigration reform framework that they hope the Senate could pass "in overwhelming and bipartisan fashion" by late spring or early summer.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday on Capitol Hill, five of the eight members of a bipartisan working group announced the contours of their agreement, which would shore up America's borders and provide an eventual path to citizenship for undocumented workers.

"We still have a long way to go, but this bipartisan grouping is a major breakthrough," New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democratic member of the group of eight, said Monday afternoon.

Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, set an ambitious goal of translating the statement of principles released Sunday evening by the senators into legislation by March. He said the Senate would try to approve the legislation for consideration in the House by the end of spring, or early summer.

The major development involves the pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers that would be established under the Senate plan. Conservatives have resisted similar proposals -- even when they were proposed by President George W. Bush -- and labeled them as "amnesty" for individuals who entered the United States illegally.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that Americans "have been too content for too long" to allow many undocumented workers to provide basic services "while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great."

"It is not beneficial to this country to have these people here, hidden in the shadows," added McCain, whose own experience on the issue of immigration provides an instructive example of why immigration reform has been so elusive for Congress.

McCain had long been one of the most vocal advocates of a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers, but tempered his opinions in recent years amid conservative scrutiny. As he was fighting off a conservative primary challenger in 2010, McCain appeared in a television ad saying it was time to "build the danged fence" -- a reference to the proposed fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, which is favored by a number of Republicans.

The senators' announcement on Monday comes a day before President Barack Obama was set to make a major policy address on Tuesday in Nevada on the topic of immigration. While Obama had not been expected to outline any formal legislation during his remarks, lawmakers from both parties will carefully parse the president's words for their impact on the immigration debate. Schumer said that he had spoken to the president about the Senate framework, and that the president was "delighted" by it.

Obama himself had vowed to achieve comprehensive immigration reform during his first term, but his efforts were stymied. That failure invited a degree of consternation from the Latino community during last year's presidential campaign, even though Obama had taken executive action to halt the deportation of individuals who were illegally brought to the United States as children.

(That order, made by Obama last summer, sought to effectively enact much of the DREAM Act, a piece of legislation that failed in the Senate as recently as 2010, when some Republicans who'd previously supported the law flipped, and voted against it.)

Indeed, the success of this push in the Senate may well hinge on Republicans' willingness to go along with a plan that gives undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, an influential House Republican, already labeled the Senate framework as "amnesty" in a statement on Monday.

House GOP leaders were otherwise mum on Monday toward the Senate proposal, though top Republicans have previously expressed a preference for tackling immigration in a piecemeal manner.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the eight-member group and a favorite of conservatives, has worked to gather conservative support for the proposal. He said at Monday's press conference that while no one is happy about the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, "We have an obligation and need to address the reality that we face."

The other factor weighing upon Republicans involves their poor performance among Hispanic voters -- a bloc that is growing in importance in a variety of key battleground states -- during last fall's election.

"The Republican Party is losing support of our Hispanic citizens," McCain said Monday in a nod toward a variable that could convince more GOP lawmakers to support this bipartisan proposal. But, McCain noted, "We're not going to get everybody onboard."

In the meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged to "do everything in [his] power as the majority leader to get a bill across the finish line."

"Nothing short of bipartisan success is acceptable to me," he said in remarks on the Senate floor preceding the group of eight's press conference.

Updated 5:20 p.m. - Senate Republicans managed to achieve their goal of blocking U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice from becoming the next secretary of state after Rice, on Thursday, withdrew her name from consideration by President Barack Obama.

Republicans were more measured in their responses to the withdrawal than they had been in their earlier criticism of Rice, whose prospective nomination had come under fire for her role in publicly explaining the Obama administration’s assessment of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

"I respect Ambassador Rice’s decision. President Obama has many talented people to choose from to serve as our next Secretary of State," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement.

Related: Rice drops out of running for secretary of state

Graham, along with Sens. John McCain, Ariz., and Kelly Ayotte, N.H., had led an effort to pre-empt Obama from naming Rice as the successor to outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"I respect Susan Rice's decision and appreciate her commitment to public service," Ayotte said in a statement. "However, my concerns regarding the terrorist attack in Benghazi go beyond any one individual."

Rice told NBC News in an exclusive interview on Thursday that she no longer wished for Obama to consider her for the position. In a letter to the president, Rice said she feared a confirmation fight in the Senate "would be lengthy, disruptive and costly."  The full interview with Rice will air tonight on Rock Center with Brian Williams at 10 p.m ET.

McCain’s office said: “Senator McCain thanks Ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well.”

Each of the Republicans, though, expressed continued concern about the Benghazi incident in their statements, and said they would continue their efforts to probe the matter.

Obama said he has accepted Rice's decision, hailing her as an "extraordinarily capable, patriotic, and passionate public servant." He said Rice would continue to serve as U.N. ambassador, and as a member of his national security team.

The trio of Senate Republicans had vowed to work to block Rice's nomination if Obama settled upon the United Nations ambassador as his nominee, stemming from her explanation for the Benghazi attacks. Rice had appeared on public affairs shows the weekend after the attack to assert that the assault -- which left four Americans dead, including Amb. Christopher Stevens – to assert that it was the outgrowth of a spontaneous rally to protest an American video that was offensive to Islam.

An investigation in subsequent weeks revealed that the attack in Benghazi was actually a coordinated terrorist attack, which prompted pointed questions from Republicans about why the administration had first put Rice forth to assert otherwise. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney tried for a series of weeks to effectively tarnish Obama politically with the mixed public explanation.

McCain, Ayotte and Graham pressed the matter further after the election, winning a meeting with Rice last month amid speculation that Obama wished to name the trusted adviser to fill the top diplomatic job.

"If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me," Obama said at a press conference following his re-election to rebuff the Republican troika. "And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and besmirch her reputation is outrageous."

But there were indications that the critiques had started to wear on the public perceptions of Rice. In the NBC/WSJ poll released Wednesday, Rice was rated positively by 20 percent of respondents, while 24 percent of said they had a negative perception of her.

ONTARIO, OH — Arizona Sen. John McCain delivered a stinging rebuke of President Barack Obama's handling of the terrorist attack on an American consulate in Libya, saying the commander in chief is either "engaged in a massive cover-up" or is "grossly incompetent."

The 2008 GOP presidential nominee focused his remarks on the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Libya rather than Hurricane Sandy at an event in battleground Ohio that had been billed as a "storm relief and volunteer appreciation" event.

"This president is either engaged in a massive cover-up deceiving the American people or he is so grossly incompetent that he is not qualified to be the commander in chief of our armed forces. It's either one of them," McCain told Romney volunteers gathered here at a Victory Center.

Though the mention of the attacks has faded from Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's stump speech, it remains a hot button for conservatives who feel the death of four Americans was a result of negligence on the part of the White House. Democrats have condemned the accusations as an attempt by the right to politicize the tragedy, a notion McCain dismissed when speaking to reporters.

"I think it's interesting to note that when there was a success, such as when, thank God, we were able to get bin Laden, the administration poured out every single detail, even details that put American lives in danger," McCain said. He later added: "It is my obligation to the men and women who are serving to get the full story out to these four brave Americans have families. They deserve to know why their sons were sacrificed in the needless fashion."

As McCain motivated volunteers at Romney's Ohio headquarters, the GOP nominee held a relief event to collect supplies for those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Obama cancelled campaign events on Tuesday, and Romney scratched an earlier event in this state, a move McCain called "appropriate."

The 2008 presidential candidate said he believes the storm "froze everything in place while this terrible tragedy fixated the attention of the American people. Now i think they're ready to get back into this campaign."

Also joining McCain was Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who encouraged Ohioans to bring supplies to Victory Centers throughout the state. They are two of many surrogates who will be hitting the Buckeye State between now and Election Day. The focus now is turning out the base and getting as many early votes as possible before Nov. 6.

Asked to compare conservative enthusiasm now to at this point four years ago, McCain said, "I hate to admit it but it's much stronger than in 2008. That's just a fact."

TAMPA, Fla. – Republican elders said Sunday that this week’s Republican National Convention here in Florida offered Mitt Romney an opportunity to re-introduce himself to voters heading into the height of the fall campaign season.

As GOP heavyweights gather in Florida for a hurricane-shortened convention, some of the party’s most influential voices laid out on “Meet the Press” the stakes for Romney.

The convention offered Romney a chance “to reconnect with people,” said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) of the forthcoming convention.

Convention organizers canceled Monday’s activities due to safety concerns associated with an impending hurricane, leaving Romney and the GOP with one less day to drive its message about what they charge are the failures of President Barack Obama, particularly when it comes to matters of the economy.

But Republicans also acknowledged that Romney must use this national platform to reverse some of the damage done to his personal reputation over the summer. The Obama campaign and Democratic super PACs have spent tens of millions of dollars on television ads in key swing states taking aim at Romney’s private sector career, personal wealth and handling of issues important to women.

Related: McCain: Further delays to GOP convention 'could be harmful'

Exacerbating problems for the Republican brand has been this past week’s uproar over Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s (R) comments about “legitimate rape.” Republicans have sharply distanced themselves from the conservative congressman’s remarks, while Democrats have sought to link those sentiments with Romney and the Republican Party as a whole.

“I'm surprised that we, the Romney-Ryan ticket, are neck and neck in the polls right now particularly with some of the setbacks we have experienced,” said Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee.

Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Ann arrive at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, to attend Sunday services on August 26, 2012.

Recommended: Hurricane impending, Republicans cancel first day of convention

Convention organizers have laid out a daily theme here in Tampa meant to soften Romney’s public image and offer greater insight into his family and charitable work, among other personal details. The convention also revolves heavily around leveling an indictment of Obama’s economic policy during the last four years.

It’s a high-stakes act for Romney; the conventions are regarded as one of the few opportunities to sway undecided voters, whose numbers are dwindling in this especially competitive election.

“This is the big Etch A Sketch moment for Mitt Romney,” Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said Sunday of the impending Republican festivities.

But there are also long-term stakes for Republicans this week in Tampa, particularly as it relates to closing the gap among women and Hispanic voters, with whom Obama enjoys a healthy advantage over Romney in the polls.

“My personal view is that we need to move beyond where we are,” Bush said of the current Republican rhetoric on immigration. He said that, on immigration, Republicans must change “not necessarily the core of our beliefs but the tone of our message and the intensity of it.”

But Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), the chief proponent of a tough immigration law in her home state, said Republicans must emphasize “the rule of law.”

She added: “Certainly those kinds of issues are going to have to be discussed moving on into the future.”

Related: Jeb Bush on White House run: 'I'm not there yet in my life'

But Republicans overall stressed the primacy of the economy this election cycle, the issue on which Romney has an advantage over Obama in most polls.

“I think Mitt wins when it's about these big things,” Bush said. “When it's about the constant distractions, it'll be a very, very close race.”