By ELIZABETH BEWLEY, Gannett Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - You might expect Tennessee's senators to clash with President Barack Obama on most of their congressional votes.
After all, Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker are no fans of the president's policies.
After the president's State of the Union address on Tuesday, Alexander nicknamed the nation's economic doldrums the "Obama economy," and according to Bloomberg, Corker told its next-day breakfast panel the speech signaled "that for the next year we're really not going to do much."
But Alexander and Corker voted in line with Obama's positions 63 percent and 61 percent of the time last year, respectively -- more often than all but a few other Republican senators.
That's according to an annual analysis of votes by Congressional Quarterly, a non-partisan publication that has tracked voting statistics since 1953.
The CQ analysis also measured how often lawmakers stuck with their party on votes that split Republicans and Democrats.
Corker voted with the GOP 94 percent of the time --more often than the 86 percent average for all Republican senators.
Alexander voted with the party 82 percent of the time.
"Sen. Alexander said when he first ran for the Senate, 'I have conservative principles and an independent attitude,' and he has voted that way," said Alexander's spokesman, Jim Jeffries.
Corker's chief of staff, Todd Womack, called the analysis "arbitrary."
"The same publication showing we had a very high party unity score also showed we voted with the administration more than many Republicans-- which is why we don't put much stock in these arbitrary rankings by third parties," he said.
The presidential-support analysis was based on 89 Senate votes, including 51 nominations to judicial and administration posts, on which the White House had staked out a clear position.
On average, Senate Republicans supported Obama 53 percent of the time. Alexander ranked No. 5 among the chamber's 47 Republicans for presidential support and Corker ranked No. 9.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had the highest presidential support score -- 72 percent. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., had the lowest -- 41 percent.
Senate Democrats backed Obama's position in 92 percent of votes.
Some of Alexander and Corker's presidential support votes fell in line with Republican priorities. Those included votes on patent reform and trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama.
On other votes backing Obama's position, Corker and Alexander deviated from some conservative colleagues. In August, they voted for a deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling that was opposed by nearly half of the chamber's Republicans -- including ultra-conservatives such as Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida.
Alexander occasionally supported Obama's position last year when Corker defied it.
In November, Alexander was one of just six Republicans who voted to uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules aimed at curbing the smog that utilities send into downwind states. And a month later, Alexander and Corker split on a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut, with Alexander voting for the temporary extension.
Alexander's 82-percent party unity number is low considering it's based on votes he cast while serving as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the No. 3 GOP leadership position in the chamber. Alexander resigned from the post this week. The top two Senate Republicans voted with their party more than 90 percent of the time.
Alexander's voting record may partly explain his decision to leave leadership, said Steven Livingston, a professor of political science at Middle Tennessee State University.
"He may have felt a few times that he had to stick with the party when he would have preferred to see if he could cut a deal," Livingston said.
He said he wasn't surprised Alexander and Corker supported Obama more often than most of their Republican colleagues.
While neither is a "closet liberal," both are "pre-tea-party" politicians in a Republican Party that has grown increasingly conservative, he said.
He pointed out that both senators once held less-partisan state and local government posts -- Alexander as Tennessee governor, Corker as Chattanooga mayor -- where bipartisan cooperation was necessary.
"They're really both out of the Howard-Baker-type Tennessee Republican Party, which is to say they're reliable conservatives but they're not populists," Livingston said.
As the party moves to the right, he added, even reliable conservatives will begin to look moderate by comparison.
In the House of Representatives, more "red meat" issues came up for votes last year as Republican leaders showed they were in no mood to work with the president, according to Thomas Mann, a congressional expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
As a result, House Republicans opposed the president's position 78 percent of the time last year -- the highest level of Republican congressional opposition to a Democratic president since 1995, when Newt Gingrich led the House and Bill Clinton was in the White House.
Republican Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. of Knoxville led that opposition, voting against the president's position 88 percent of the time -- more than all but two other House Republicans.
All of Tennessee's Republican House members disagreed with the president on at least 75 percent of votes.
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