Susan Collins is being sent coat hangers after her office released a statement that she wouldn't consider the issue of Trump saying he had a litmus test for judicial nominees, that they would vote to overturn Roe v Wade, effectively outlawing abortion as state legislatures and the Congress and President choose to exercise ownership over women's bodies. I can tell you from decades of observing Susan Collins both in action and inaction that she will vote for the most putrid nominee unless she figures it will cost her votes or something else she wants more than her pantomime role of a principled public figure. She knows the Maine and, largely the national media won't point out that she's a hypocrite so it's up to We the People to let her know that she's not getting away with it this time.
Susan Collins, if she doesn't choose to retire from the Senate, primarily cares about not getting a serious primary challenge from the neo-fascist Republican Party of Maine, the party that gave our state Paul LePage and whose control of the legislature acted as no kind of effective stop on him even as some Republicans were horrified at what a Trumpian thug he has been and has remained.
She has to be shaken from the belief that if she gets the Republican nomination that her election is ensured because the Maine media has always had her back. As I pointed out hers is pretty much the same position that was created for Margaret Chase Smith by the media here but that wasn't enough to save her in 1972 during the Nixon crime spree, when she lost her position, as was widely believed, for life. She was voted out largely for not being any kind of effective critic of the criminality of Nixon and the criminality of Trump is ever more blatant.
The pose that the Supreme Court is above politics plays into this but the Supreme Court under the Republican regime is blatantly political, that has been undeniable since Bush v. Gore in 2000 and it's far more so now as the Roberts court is openly supporting the Republican attempt to rule even as it gets fewer votes through things like gerrymandering for blatantly partisan and racist motives. No one should let any politician who votes for a Republican-fascist being put on the Supreme Court this year should get away with it because it is the tipping point. Someone pointed out that the fig leaf of Judicial impartiality has consisted of Anthony Kennedy's very occasional votes not with his fellow Republicans, with this nomination to replace him, that cover on the shame of the Roberts Court is gone, especially after the Senate Republicans stole a nomination from Barack Obama to install the incompetent and corrupt Neil Gorsuch. If you want to read Susan Collins support for putting him on the Court, after she cooperated in stealing the seat, you can read what she said.
Susan Collins doesn't care about women having the right to safe abortion, she certainly knew how Gorsuch and all of the other Republicans she voted to put on the Court would vote on that issue. She doesn't care about any of the rights or benefits the Republican-fascist Supreme Court majority is crushing in its return to the worst of the Gilded Age-Jim Crow era. Susan Collins cares about Susan Collins. If you are going to force her to not support Republican-fascism, that's the only basis you're going to do it on.
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