Rice in Limbo as Nomination Remains Uncertain WASHINGTON - It did not take long for Susan E. Rice and her champions at the White House to realize that the Republican furor over the Benghazi attack was not going away after the presidential campaign ended. One of her fiercest critics, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, made that clear on the Sunday after the election when he said he would oppose any attempt to make Ms. Rice the secretary of state, citing the account she gave in television interviews of the attack in Libya that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. According to senior officials, Ms. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, then made the case to President Obama's national security advisers that she should meet with Mr. Graham and her other critics in the Senate. But the meeting has only complicated the effort to present her as a credible successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton when, as expected, she leaves the Cabinet. Far from clearing the air, Ms. Rice's session last week with three Republican senators only deepened their suspicions that she had shaded the truth about the terrorist attack for political reasons. "What made it worse was that there were new questions that were not answered," said Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who met Ms. Rice along with Mr. Graham and Senator John McCain of Arizona. The ill-fated attempt at bipartisan outreach only highlighted the awkward limbo in which both Ms. Rice and the White House now find themselves over a nomination that by all accounts Mr. Obama has not signed off on. Although Ms. Rice is still considered Mr. Obama's favored choice to head the State Department, he is also seriously considering Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. So putting on a full-court press for Ms. Rice, some officials said, could inhibit the president's room for maneuvering. Still, in an effort to contain the damage, the White House has set up an ad hoc team to respond to the charges over Ms. Rice's statements about the attack on the American compound in Benghazi on Sept. It has tried, with varying degrees of success, to recruit prominent outsiders, like former Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright, and other Cabinet members, like Mrs. Clinton, to come to her defense. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton said that Ms. Rice's statements on five Sunday television news shows days after the attack were "based on the information that had been given to every senior official in our administration." Mrs Clinton added that Ms. Rice "made it very clear in her appearances that the information was subject to change." Ms. Rice's most stalwart defender has been the president himself. He said last week that he did not worry about what "folks say on cable news programs, attacking highly qualified personnel like Susan Rice," though he added that he had not made any personnel decisions. In the meantime, Ms. Rice has had to battle a steady drip of negative news - allegations about her record as a policy maker on Africa, her role as assistant secretary of state for African affairs in a 1998 terrorist attack on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and even her financial holdings. The question is whether Ms. Rice, 48, could survive a confirmation battle after the drubbing she has taken from Republicans who seem bent on disqualifying her before she is named. Some Republicans said the White House had left Ms. Rice to fend for herself. "They floated her name to test the waters; they found out that the waters are pretty rough, and then they didn't give her a life preserver," said Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. Now, Republican senators all across the political spectrum have questions about her experiences and judgment. "I think it is very uphill for her at this point," he added. Republicans said the White House's approach fits a pattern of not reaching out to Congress, whether on budget negotiations or to defend other appointments. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said the White House had not contacted her about Ms. Rice. After meeting with her last week, Ms. Collins expressed deep reservations about her suitability for secretary of state. Ms. Collins said she did not believe outreach would have mitigated the issues that arose in their meeting, but she added that the White House generally had not engaged with Congressional Republicans in any meaningful way since the departure of Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's former chief of staff who is now the mayor of Chicago. Friends of Ms. Rice, some of whom have voiced their frustration to the White House, said the administration had been distracted, first by the election and now by fiscal talks with Congress.