Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander said Thursday he would support Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, breaking with Republican leaders who have questioned whether she would bring a bias to the bench.Earlier: A Republican Obama would vote against Sotomayor.
Alexander, the No. 3 Republican in Senate leadership, said that her “political and judicial philosophy may be different than mine, especially regarding Second Amendment rights.”
[..] Alexander criticized then-Sen. Barack Obama and Democratic senators for voting against John Roberts’s nomination for chief justice in 2005, “solely because they disagreed with what Sen. Obama described as Roberts’s ‘overarching political philosophy’ and ‘his work in the White House and the solicitor general’s office’ that ‘consistently sided’ with ‘the strong in opposition to the weak.’”
“Today, it would be equally wrong for me to vote against Judge Sotomayor solely because she is not on my side on some issues,” Alexander said.
“It is my hope that my vote now not only will help to confirm a well-qualified nominee but will help to return the Senate to the practice only recently lost of inquiring diligently into qualifications of a nominee and then accepting that elections have consequences, one of which is to confer upon the president the constitutional right to nominate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
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39 minutes ago
"It is my hope that my vote now ... will help to return the Senate to the practice only recently lost of inquiring diligently into qualifications of a nominee and then accepting that elections have consequences, one of which is to confer upon the president the constitutional right to nominate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
ReplyDeleteFTW!