I don’t think that’s true. They didn’t need any Republican votes to move it out, just a majority. Alito was moved out on a straight party line vote. No Dems voted for him. The dems have an 11-7 edge. Even if Graham voted no, she still would have been moved out.
You raise an interesting point re Alito. Not sure the two nominations are distinguishable.
Went through this exercise with Sotomayor and understood the Senate rules as requiring at least one favorable vote from the minority party to move it out of the Judiciary Committee. Failure to so move would not necessarily defeat the nomination but would require additional valuable time for the nomination to reach the full Senate.
Will try to locate and present that authority ASAP when time available.
If your view is correct, it makes it all the more difficult to understand why a bona fide Republican could vote for her confirmation. But the question seems to answer itself.
Unless, of course, the Alito case gave rise to the Senate rule.
See the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Rule IV.
“Law professor Michael Dorf wrote that the Senate Judiciary Committee has a rule that one member of the minority party must agree for a matter to be brought to a vote. Otherwise the matter will not be voted on. Dorf is a law professor at Cornell University and a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.”
“Rule IV states, ‘The Chairman shall entertain a non-debatable motion to bring a matter before the Committee to a vote. If there is objection to bring the matter to a vote without further debate, a roll call vote of the Committee shall be taken, and debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with ten votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority.”
(http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2009/04/justice-souter-to-retire-according-to.html)
Rule IV is not a gamechanger, but it does offer political opponents additional time within which to demonstrate a candidate is unqualified.
Interestingly, it was Graham that also provided the sole Republican vote for Sotomayor.