Alexander's Office Reportedly Trying to Deceive Gun Owners

[Guest 2HOW]

Alexander's Office Reportedly Trying to Deceive Gun Owners

-- Recent anti-gun vote on Koh shows senator's duplicity

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert

8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151

Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408

http://www.gunowners.org

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Last week, we reported that Senator Lamar Alexander was one of the eight

Republicans who stabbed gun owners in the back by casting an

all-important vote in favor of Harold Koh.

Since then, we have heard that Alexander's office is denying he cast

that critical vote.

To make sense of what Alexander is trying to do, understand that there

were TWO Senate votes that were cast on the Koh nomination -- but only

one was truly "critical." The following information will help you

understand the "game" that Senators use in an attempt to play both sides

of the fence when they are trying to disguise their votes from the

voters.

(1) Question: How many votes does it take to maintain a filibuster on a

nomination or a bill? Answer: 41 votes (if all Senators are present).

There are 100 Senators, and it takes 60 votes to kill a filibuster. Or,

put another way, it takes 60 anti-Second Amendment votes to "Invoke

Cloture" (or shut off debate) and bring a nomination to the floor.

The opposite side of this coin is: it only takes 41 votes to keep the

debate going and deny cloture! So, the Second Amendment side only

needed 41 votes to deny Koh a floor vote on his nomination. (Actually,

because of several absentee Senators, we only needed 37 votes last

week.)

We got 31 votes, with 8 Republicans siding with the opposition. And

Senator Lamar Alexander voted wrong on this critical vote!

You can see the cloture vote (where a minority of Senators present can

kill the nomination) at: http://tinyurl.com/mubsfs

(2) Question: How many votes does it take to defeat a nomination or

bill once "cloture" has been invoked? Answer: 51 votes (if all

Senators are present).

Do you see the 10 vote difference required between (1) and (2)? It is

much easier to muster 41 votes to defeat a cloture motion than it is to

muster 51 votes to defeat a nomination on the floor.

You can see the final passage vote (requiring a majority of Senators

present to kill the nomination) at: http://tinyurl.com/m4m2f5

Keep in mind that the treacherous vote -- where we had the REAL chance

to defeat Koh -- was on the cloture/filibuster vote (See #1 above).

Once the Koh nomination made its way to the floor, three Senators -- one

of whom was Alexander -- crossed over to vote against final passage

because the Obama administration no longer needed their votes.

Having assured passage by voting wrong on cloture, Sen. Alexander is

apparently telling people that he voted the right way by pointing only

to his floor vote (where the nomination was a done deal at that point)

while ignoring his cloture vote (where we needed him the most).

The bottom line is: Lamar Alexander is responsible for a very bad Second

Amendment vote in this matter and is attempting to disguise it with his

meaningless vote when the battle was already lost.

We hope this clarifies the situation... politicians like Alexander love

to use cascading votes so they can be on both sides of the same issue.

ACTION: If Sen. Alexander has told you that he supposedly voted right

on the Harold Koh nomination, please contact him again and let him know

that you are aware of the deceptive game that he is playing. You can

contact Senator Alexander by going to his webform at

http://alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home and

selecting the topic "Gun Rights."

----- Pre-written letter -----

Dear Senator Alexander:

Please don't try to tell me or any of your other constituents that you

voted right on the Harold Koh nomination.

You voted to end the filibuster (that is, to invoke cloture) on June 24.

That was the critical vote -- where we needed less than 50 votes to

defeat the nomination. Sure, you voted against Koh's nomination when it

was basically a done deal. But when we really needed you to support the

filibuster... when your vote was most desperately needed... you voted

for gun control.

And that's what failure to support the filibuster was. It was gun

control, pure and simple. Harold Koh is a gun grabber, and he is now

Hillary Clinton's chief lawyer at the State Department.

Shame on you!

Sincerely,