Will Lamar! Alexander Stand By His Own Words?

Upon the news that President Obama will nominate Second Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Sonia Sotomayor (who is known for, among other things, saving baseball), Senator Lamar! Alexander released the following statement:

“It is the Senate’s responsibility to give the president’s Supreme Court nominee both respectful and rigorous scrutiny. The nominee should neither be pre-confirmed nor pre-judged.”

Not an outright promise to try and kill the nomination, but by no means a call to allow a fair vote on it either.

But in 2005, with a different President in office, Lamar! was a much stronger proponent of the idea that once the nominee has been heard from and thoroughly vetted, he or she should receive an up-or-down-vote (TM).

In remarks on the Senate floor from March 9, 2005, Lamar! decried the use of the filibuster:

During the last session of Congress, Democratic senators blocked an up or down vote 20 times on 10 of President Bush’s nominees for the federal appellate courts. Filibusters were threatened against five more judicial nominees. With one possible exception, this had never happened before. The Senate has a 200-year tradition of majority rule when it comes to confirming judges.

In fact, until the last session of Congress, the idea of not voting on a president’s judicial nominee once it reached the floor was unthinkable. It would be difficult to imagine a case in which passions ran higher than during the confirmation proceedings for Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991. Yet, the first President Bush nominated him in July of 1991, and three months later the Senate voted to confirm him, 52 to 48. There was never any discussion of blocking his nomination by blocking an up or down vote.

In another speech to the Senate floor on April 12, 2005, he strongly opposed the idea that the minority should be allowed to "shut down the Senate," and claimed that the nuclear option was simply a way in which the Senate could continue to operate under the same rules as it had for 200 years:

"I am beginning to think it is a train and that there is not much way to avoid a train wreck. The train wreck I am talking about is a threat by the minority to 'shut the Senate down in every way' if the majority adopts rules that will do what the Senate has done for 200 years, which is to vote up or down the President's appellate judicial nominees."

Finally, in another set of remarks from May 20th, 2005--just over four years ago--Lamar! pledged in no uncertain terms that although he may vote against eventual nomination, he would never filibuster the President's judicial nominee, no matter what party or ideology.

I have said I will never filibuster a president's judicial nominees. I said it two years ago when John Kerry might have been president. For me, that meant then -- and it means today, and tomorrow -- that if a President Kerry or a President Clinton nominates some liberal I do not like, I may talk for a long time about it and I may vote against the person, but I will insist that we eventually vote up or down, as the Senate has for two centuries.

So Senator, you've said, unequivocally, that you do not believe in filibustering a judicial nominee no matter how opposed you are to the eventual nomination, that it does not matter to you who the President doing the nominating is, that the Senate has a 200-year tradition of allowing the majority rule when it comes to nominees, and that every nominee should have an up-or-down-vote (TM).

If that's what you really believe, and not just partisan bloviating, then please, come out and say that although you may eventually oppose Justice Sotomayor's nomination, you will not stand in the way of allowing an up-or-down vote on the issue.

Or are you flip-flopping on the strong statements you made four years ago for the sake of partisan gamesmanship?