" too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism" Susan Collins' Attack On Christine Blasey Ford And Her Supporters

It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor. Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal. Surely we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we dish out to outsiders.

Margaret Chase Smith - Declaration of Conscience Speech

I had thought, before listening to Susan Collins' extended speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday, when, I hope, she is at the end of a discreditable career as a Senator,  that she was going for the effect of the legendary Declaration of Conscience delivered by her predecessor as Senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith, that Collins would evoke the memory of Chase Smith when she so famously departed from current Republican orthodoxy,  but, no, that's not what Susan Collins did.   She used her speech to attack, not the disgusting and dishonest process geared to shield Kavanaugh from his record, from evidence, from everything,  cooked up by Grassley and McConnell but to attack a woman who had been brutally assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh.  And to attack not only Christine Blasey Ford but also her own constituents and, especially, millions of women who had opposed him being put on the Supreme Court.

Susan Collins didn't exercise conscience in departing from the current orthodoxy of the Republican Party, the party of Donald Trump and FOX as even then Chase Smith feared it was becoming the party of Senator Joseph McCarthy and Red Channels, Susan Collins, at length, said she was all in with Trump and FOX.  Here's the beginning of what made Chase Smith famous in case you heard Collins and think there wasn't every difference in the world:

Mr. President:

I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership in either the Legislative Branch or the Executive Branch of our Government.

That leadership is so lacking that serious and responsible proposals are being made that national advisory commissions be appointed to provide such critically needed leadership. 

I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.

I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.

Yesterday that last description fit the words of Susan Collins against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and those who opposed the man who attacked her and assaulted Deborah Ramirez and very well may have done the things Julie Swetnick said he and his buddy, Mark Judge, did.  Susan Collins attacked her own constituents who passionately opposed putting a demonstrable perjurer, liar, political opportunist hack AND A VERY CREDIBLY ACCUSED PERPETRATOR OF MULTIPLE SEXUAL ATTACKS ON WOMEN on the Supreme Court where Susan Collins knows as well as everyone else does that he will vote to remove the most basic rights of women to control their own bodies and who can predict how many other basic rights of women and all manner of other powerless people.   Susan Collins did that while whining about how outraged she was by the shattering of the "shield of congressional immunity" by people whose rights are put in the most obvious danger by Brett Kavanaugh. 

What Susan Collins did was not a display of conscience, it was to provide her with ass cover as she did what she knew was an act of unprincipled, partisan, power, of going along with Donald Trump's opportunistic placement of a far-right, partisan hack who has spent his entire career in enhancing the power of Republican presidents - switching his intellectual line to go with which party controlled the White House - and to do so by now attacking the very victim of an attempted rape by Brett Kavanaugh who she had  previously pretended to take seriously and sympathize with as the impact of Dr. Ford's testimony was fresh. 

Susan Collins showed the world what she always has been in no uncertain terms over the course of this and she doesn't like the result of her act being blown.  She has been used to the courtly deference that she has always been shown by the Maine media (almost uniformly in control of partisan Republicans for most of that time, the electronic media still is, including the alleged public broadcaster).  She has been used to the national media peddling her as some kind of principled moderate when she only resorted to that when she had to to maintain her con-job on her constituents.

Collins'  latest ploy is to play sucker when Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump promise her an ass-covering vote on protecting the Affordable Care Act only to have him and Trump pull it away as soon as the vote was taken to give who knows how many billions to billionaires and, now, to pretend she doesn't know how Brett Kavanaugh will vote on womens' rights ON HIS SAY SO when she knows as well as anyone that he is under no obligation to keep his word.  The pose of judicial impartiality is the perfect cover because he can always claim, in the unlikely circumstance anyone questions him on his blatantly empty promise to Collins, that he decided it on the merits of the individual case.   Anyone who was fooled by that should know it for the lame pantomime it has been.  He knew he was giving Susan Collins what she wanted, a ruse to use when he does what everyone knows he is going to do, either in one blanket overturning of Roe or, more likely by killing it one ruling at a time.   No doubt John Roberts will be looking to do that as Roberts doesn't want the overall veil covering the shame of his court to go up in flames. 

Susan Collins is a disgrace and a fraud, she always has been.  It's just that now that she can deliver what she,  "as a Republican, as a woman . . .  as a United States Senator" has always wanted, the absolute empowerment of her party even as they rig the system to gain that power undemocratically using Supreme Court fiat to thwart such things as one-person, one vote, basic voting rights and equal rights. With her disgusting speech of yesterday, she should have her shameful vote and her shameless speech thrown in her face for the rest of her life, letting her know that this will mark her name just as Margaret Chase Smith's famous speech at the beginning of her career marks hers.

Update:  Going over Collin's speech again, it's interesting to consider how she and her fellow Kavanaugh supporters used the class difference between Dr. Ford and Julie Swetnick to dismiss the blue-collar, public school girl's account out of hand. That has been something that should resonate with Collins' largely blue-collar class constituents but which probably will not because the media won't bring it up.