Sen. Susan Collins wants you to know that against all evidence to the contrary, having Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court is fine, just fine, and her vote for him is completely defensible. Despite his votes to deport Dreamers, let employers fire LGBTQ people for being LGBTQ people, and take abortion access away from most of the women of Louisiana, she's standing by her man. Well, she pretty much ignored those first two votes of his, but after her fervent defense of him on the issue of abortion during his confirmation, she apparently felt she couldn't avoid this one. She should have, because she did herself no favors.
In a terse statement, she said: "I agree with the Supreme Court's decision […] which recognizes the burden that the Louisiana statute could impose." So far so good. "Some have tried to suggest that this opinion is an indication of how certain justices would vote on the question of whether abortion will remain legal. As Justice Gorsuch noted," she continued, "'In truth, Roe v. Wade is not even at issue here.' And while Justice Kavanaugh called for additional fact finding in this case, he gave no indication in his dissenting opinion that he supports overturning Roe." She reiterated that when talking to reporters. Kavanaugh "did not make any allusion to Roe v Wade, or Casey, which are the two longstanding precedents that protect a woman's right to choose," she said, adding that she's still confident with Kavanaugh on the court. Leaving us once again to ponder whether she's really that gullible, or if she's really that much of a liar. Or both.
Let's make sure her time is up. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!
My money is on the latter, because Collins is certainly smart enough to see the game and to understand what's happening with all these cases. She knows that the right—including the Federalist Society judges she's been helping McConnell confirm—is using overturning Roe as the decoy, and that the real game is gutting it. Keeping the empty husk of Roe standing while actual access to abortion is swept away in huge swaths of the country is the game.
And don't even get me started on the whole smashing precedent part of Kavanaugh's vote. That thing Collins promised he told her he took very, very seriously and would never, ever do. Because the exact same state law was overturned by the Supreme Court just four years ago. That's called precedent. That's the thing that Chief Justice John Roberts, no friend to abortion rights, used to hang his vote with the majority on. Collins remains mum on that whole part of the vote, clinging to the myth that it's only about Roe.
As Markos wrote, it would have been no skin off Kavanaugh's nose to throw Collins a bone here and vote with the majority citing exactly that issue: precedent. That he didn't makes it even more clear that this guy is going to spend the rest of his life on this court doing away with abortion (and next, contraception), and he can do it because Collins put him there.