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I think Sen. Susan Collins’ reputation as a bipartisan moderate is perhaps one of the most successful marketing tricks in American history. Her actions as a senator, however, tell quite a different story. For the last decade, she has mostly acted as a willing rubber stamp for an extreme far-right agenda.
I believe Donald Trump and the movement he spawned have launched an unprecedented assault on American freedom, prosperity, and democracy. Sen. Collins has obediently enabled it at nearly every turn.
It is interesting that Sen. Collins rarely seems to be a deciding vote against Trump. She will occasionally offer up some half-hearted dissent to, I believe, soften her image, but it seems Trump knows that he can depend on her when the chips are down. When, for example, he wanted Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, Collins was there for him.
In 1950, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith delivered her famous Declaration of Conscience. She condemned the authoritarian tactics of Joseph McCarthy and urged her party not to “ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” I can only imagine how concerned Sen. Smith would be at her successor’s seeming lack of moral fortitude.
I will close with a fact that I believe cannot be repeated often enough. Sen. Collins voted to give ICE another $70 billion of your money. They used it to kill one of her constituents in front of his 3-year-old daughter. I hope Mainers will keep this in mind come November.
Katie Dunn
Waterville