Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said today that though he’s “not going to start rejecting” potential Supreme Court nominees before the President nominates them, he will object to anyone who exhibits Obama’s “strange criteria” of “applying their feelings instead of applying the law.”
On MSNBC today, Alexander commented on the imminent nomination of someone to replace Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced last week that he plans to retire this summer.
Alexander said that he knows “elections have consequences,” and he didn’t expect the President to nominate someone Alexander agrees with politically.
He noted that he won’t “start rejecting people” before they are nominated, but added that he hopes the President will nominate someone from the “mainstream,” and they should “then have an up-and-down vote on that person, and I’d like to be able to vote for that person.”
Alexander also said that he thinks the “Democrats poisoned the well” by opposing Supreme Court nominations during President Bush’s term. Still, Alexander said, he wants an up-or-down vote on Obama’s nominee.
Alexander also commented on the START treaty, which he called “a step in the right direction.”
But he added that the last treaty “took 431 days to consider, so we’ll have a lot of questions to ask.”
