Judge Sonia Sotomayor is expected to win Senate confirmation effortlessly in Thursday’s vote as two more Republican senators threw their support behind the country’s first Hispanic high court pick.
The final debate is scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. and the official vote will be held at 3p.m. White House spokespeople said a swearing-in ceremony could take place as soon as Friday, August 7.
A recent nationwide poll revealed that a vast majority of Americans now support the Senate’s confirmation of Sotomayor, reports CNN.
During the full chamber’s second day of deliberations, the varying opinions between Democrats and Republican were polarizing in reference to Sotomayor’s judicial experience and temperament.
Democrats applauded the nominee as a fair and objective judge with a compelling life story. Republicans, on the other hand, depict her as a judicial revolutionist determined to fulfill liberal political agendas.
Senator Kit Bond of MIssouri was the Republican pioneer that broke away from his party’s general consensus and announced he would vote for her despite disagreeing with several of her rulings.
“There’s been no significant finding against her. There’s been no public uprising against her,” Bond said. “I do not believe that the Constitution tells me that I should refuse to support her merely because I disagree with her on some cases.
I will support her, I’ll be proud for her, the community she represents, and the American dream she shows is possible.”
In addition to Kit, Republican Judd Greg of New Hampshire also backed Sotomayor said he would vote in favor of the nominee and believes she’s qualified for the position.
“Although Judge Sotomayor and I may not see eye-to-eye on all issues or share the same political ideologies, our democratic system should allow for such differences,” Gregg said in statement.
He lamented what he called the politicization of the judicial confirmation process, saying: “This is why I criticized the Democratic leadership’s tactics to block highly qualified judicial nominees during the Bush administration, and these same principles still hold true for me now.”
“Here we have a nominee who has had more experience as a federal judge than any nominee in decades,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that approved Sotomayor’s nomination after a four-day hearing.
She has “real-world experience, real-world judging, (and) an awareness of the real-world consequences of decisions.”
