Campaign Action
Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins gets a long and glowing bio treatment out of the Christian Science Monitor. She comes out of it an anachronism, with the piece an elegy for a kind of politics that never really was. Which is kind of obvious, from the intro the Monitor gives the story.
In a hyperpartisan Washington, centrists like Maine’s Senator Collins are both more isolated and more powerful than ever. This special report—the result of months of reporting and exclusive interviews—examines the arc of Collins’s career and whether her brand of moderation is becoming a relic of the past or holds the key to the future.
You get lots of quotes from and about Collins, like this one she told a bunch of elementary school kids: "I like that feeling of being able to make a difference." Or her condemnation of the "poisonous" atmosphere in the Senate, where midterm elections politics is causing 'good policy' to die. "Even people I’ve worked with for many, many years are falling into that trap," she laments. As if there is good policy in the age of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. As if the Senate is still a place that even cares about policy. As if she wasn't a willing participant in the Republican majority.
Because here she is with a nearly 80 percent voting record for Trump. She's voted with Trump 78.9 percent of the time. She has yet to reject a single one of Trump's nominees. She didn't just support Jefferson Beauregard Sessions' appointment to be attorney general, she championed him. She escorted him to his goddamned confirmation hearings as his sponsor. She testified that she had "never witnessed anything to suggest that Senator Sessions is anything other than a dedicated public servant and a decent man," and that he "is not motivated by racial animus," when his whole public record had reeked of bigotry.
Collins is no moderate, and she sure as hell isn't the conscience of the Republican party. Not in the era of Trump. She's not going to be its savior, either.
Not unless she recognizes what her party has become and her true power to change it. Plenty before her have decided to go independent and caucus with the other party. That's all it would take. But that's not who she is. She doesn't have that much courage or conviction.
But she might at least put her vote where her mouth is on protecting women's rights, civil rights, voting rights, health care, the environment, and pretty much everything good thing achieved in the past 50 years, and vote against Trump's Supreme Court nominee.
The people of Maine need to call her on it. Directly. Every day. At her office numbers: (207) 622-8414, (207) 945-0417, (207) 283-1101, (207) 493-7873, (207) 784-6969, (207) 780-3575, (202) 224-2523. And in person this weekend, while she's back home.
Do you live in Maine? You have a powerful voice in stopping Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Click here to write Sen. Collins.