Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that a vote on President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court would be held in the Senate and one key lawmaker just backed him up.
Mitch McConnell secured a key swing vote in the upcoming Senate confirmation hearing of President Trump’s nominee to fill the seat of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Friday. Sen. Lamar Alexander agreed that President Trump should move forward with his nomination and said that he’s ready to vote ahead of November’s election.
The Tennessee Republican addressed calls from the Dems urging a postponement of the process until after the election, saying Sunday that “no one should be surprised” by the Senate’s move to vote during a presidential election year, and that Democrats would do the same if they had control of the White House and Senate.
“No one should be surprised that a Republican Senate majority would vote on a Republican President’s Supreme Court nomination, even during a presidential election year,” Alexander, who is retiring at the end of his current term, said in a statement.
“The Constitution gives senators the power to do it. The voters who elected them expect it,” he added.
“Going back to George Washington, the Senate has confirmed many nominees to the Supreme Court during a presidential election year. It has refused to confirm several when the President and Senate majority were of different parties,” Alexander continued.
“Senator McConnell is only doing what Democrat leaders have said they would do if the shoe were on the other foot,” the Texas lawmaker pointed out.
“I have voted to confirm Justices Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh based upon their intelligence, character and temperament. I will apply the same standard when I consider President Trump’s nomination to replace Justice Ginsburg,” Alexander said.
The Senate will most likely move forward on the confirmation of President Thump’s nominee, as McConnell noted after Ruth Ginsburg’s death that the president’s choice “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Democrats will need four GOP senators to help them block a Trump nominee, by either voting against or abstaining. Currently, only GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have spoken publicly about their view that the Senate should wait until after the election November.
President Trump has urged Republicans to move ahead “without delay,” citing the obligation to voters who elected him.
“I will be putting forth a nominee this week, it will be a woman,” President Trump said at a campaign rally in North Carolina over the weekend.
Trump also added that the nominee will be a very “very talented, very brilliant woman” because “I like women more than I like men.”