Sen. Susan Collins is very peeved. She's darned mad at the voters of Maine for actually questioning her God-given right to be their senator forever, never mind her promise in her first campaign that she would only serve two terms. But that was four terms ago. Ancient history. Now? Now the seat is hers, dammit. "I grew up in Caribou, I’ve lived in Bangor for 26 years. My family's been in Maine for generations," she told Politico's Burgess Everett (leaving out that bit about the term limit promise).
She's just stomping mad that Sara Gideon would dare question her right to the seat, and throws in a bit of Trumpian projection while she's at it: "She will say or do anything to try to win, […] This race is built on a foundation of falsehoods. And trying to convince the people of Maine that somehow I am no longer the same person." Well, I guess we know she is the same person! I mean, the person they first elected in 1996 said she was going to step aside after two terms, because: "Twelve years is long enough to be in public service, make a contribution and then come home and let someone else take your place." She lied to the voters of Maine then, and she's still at it.
Your $3 contribution will help Sara Gideon get Collins out of the Senate!
Like the part where she still won't say whether she voted for Donald Trump in the state's presidential primary in March (she voted, and he was the only Republican on the ticket) or if she'll vote for Trump in the general election. She's gone to great and really stupid lengths to try to disassociate herself from Trump, but the reality is that it's too late.
Gideon's campaign is making sure of that. "Senator Collins' votes for 181 of Trump's far-right judicial nominees, for the corporate tax giveaway that put Mainers' health care in jeopardy and her continued refusal to stand up to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump show just how much she's changed after 24 years in Washington," Maeve Coyle, a Gideon spokeswoman, said in a statement. "Her desperate, misleading attacks on Sara make clear that she's willing to do anything to stay there." One-hundred-and-eighty-one Trump judges. Collins thinks that saying she won't vote for Amy Coney Barrett—before the election; she's not ruled out a lame duck vote—is good enough. Never mind that Collins waited until it became clear that Sen. Mitch McConnell had the votes to confirm Barrett to come out with her "brave" stand. She couldn't be more transparent, or more angry that Maine finally sees through her.
"I was saddened by [Ginsburg's] death to start with. And disappointed that there was a rush to fill the vacancy," Collins lamented to Politico. "Confirming conservative [and] moderate to conservative judges is Mitch McConnell's top priority. So, our goals are very different." She's calling that evidence that she's still the moderate maverick. Everett, by the way, laps it up, saying it "shows Collins' willingness to break with her party—and the limits of a lonely moderate's influence in an increasingly conservative GOP."
At least she can still bamboozle a Politico reporter. It's not working with voters in Maine anymore.
