Lamar Alexander of Tennessee on Thursday became the sixth Senate Republican -- and only member of the GOP leadership -- to announce support for Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court.
Alexander is chairman of the Republican Conference, the No. 3 leadership position for the party in the Senate.
He is the third Southern Republican to support Sotomayor, joining Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mel Martinez of Florida.
Alexander largely tracked Graham's reasoning when he said in a floor speech, "It is my hope that my vote now will not only 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."
No Republican had announced support for Sotomayor since Graham did last week. In the interim, another 14 said they'd vote against her. The latest was Alexander's fellow Tennessee senator, Bob Corker, whose statement of opposition on Wednesday made him the 24th GOP "no" vote.
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