“The Democrats have once again gone into a room and convinced themselves to do something that’s never been done before in the 230 year history of the Senate and that is to require more than 51 votes to confirm a Supreme Court nominee,” Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) tells The Tennessee Star in an emailed statement received late Wednesday.
“I have spoken on the Senate floor twice in recent weeks to try to convince Democrats not to filibuster Judge Gorsuch’s nomination because it will be damaging to the Senate and to the country,” Alexander adds.
“When I was in the minority, I opposed President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, but I did not support a filibuster of her nomination – I believed she was entitled to a majority vote – and Judge Gorsuch is also entitled to a majority vote,” the Volunteer State’s senior senator notes.
“I also wanted to point to a statement that the senator told a reporter this week,” a spokesperson for Alexander adds in that same email to The Star:
“One way or the other I’ll vote for him.”
“Finally, here is the senator’s floor speech, from where he talked about how filibustering to death the Gorsuch nomination would fly in the face of 230 years of Senate tradition,” the spokesperson adds.
Democrats in the Senate have promised to launch a filibuster to prevent an up or down confirmation vote on Judge Neal Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Senator Alexander, however, did not respond directly to the question posed to him by The Star on Wednesday:
Will Senator Alexander vote YESÂ to invoke cloture (to end Democrats’ plan to filibuster), or will he vote NOÂ and allow the filibuster to continue?
The Star posed the same question to Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), Tennessee’s junior senator.
“Senator Corker announced his support for Judge Gorsuch shortly after meeting with him in his Capitol Hill office on February 2. He is pleased President Trump has nominated such a well-respected and qualified individual and looks forward to voting to confirm Judge Gorsuch as our next U.S. Supreme Court justice,” a spokesperson for Senator Corker responded to The Star in an emailed statement.
Senator Corker did not respond to The Star’s emailed response, which requested a definitive answer to our original question on whether or not he will vote YES or NO to invoke cloture to end a planned Democrat filibuster of Gorsuch’s nomination.
[…] The Tennessee Star reported earlier this morning, Corker had been noncommittal and Alexander had been indirect in their most […]
Any Senator that does not vote for Gorsuch will be voted out of office!