Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is counting on her supporters buying her excuse that she's not a Republican tool, just "deeply and implausibly, stupid." She spent the weekend playing that game, appearing on Sunday shows insisting that the occupier of the Oval Office would never nominate someone to the Supreme Court who is going to overturn Roe v. Wade.
In fact, she's so committed to her story of her own stupidity, she insists that both Chief Justice John Roberts and even Neil Gorsuch would never do such a thing. She has to keep up this pretense that she would never vote for an anti-abortion activist judge so that she can say now she "would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade."
We are supposed to buy that she "sincerely" believes that no Federalist Society-approved nominee from a president who has vowed that he will overturn Roe v. Wade and believes "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who get abortions. Then when the Supreme Court that she voted for does just that, she can shake her head in profound disappointment and try to lie her way out of her culpability in the result.
We've been here before with Collins, multiple times. And we've seen just how quick she is to sell out women's rights. She literally did it just this spring, when she again offered up health insurance legislation she had previously traded away in exchange for some magic beans from Mitch McConnell, when she provided the clinch vote for the Republican tax scam.
But for added GOP sweetener this time around, she included a provision in that legislation that would strip abortion coverage from insurance plans in the Affordable Care Act markets. Had she prevailed with this bill, abortion coverage in the entire individual market would have been jeopardized.
She's going to have to do a lot better than that.
Do you live in Maine? You have a powerful voice in stopping Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Click here to write Sen. Collins.