Susan Collins was always for Brett Kavanaugh

If Susan Mar­garet Collins, six­ty-five, of Cari­bou, Maine, the senior U.S. Sen­a­tor for the Pine Tree State, was ever real­ly a “Rock­e­feller Repub­li­can”, she isn’t anymore.

In a care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed, metic­u­lous­ly planned, lengthy floor speech, Collins made it abun­dant­ly clear that she fierce­ly sup­ports Don­ald Trump’s extrem­ist pick to fill the vacan­cy left by the retire­ment of Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy.

And although she did not say so, it is evi­dent from her remarks that she has sup­port­ed Brett Kavanaugh all along, despite pre­tend­ing to be unde­cid­ed and uncom­mit­ted. The only rea­son she con­cealed her fer­vent sup­port for this nom­i­na­tion was so that she could ride in at the eleventh hour and deliv­er the biggest shot in the arm pos­si­ble to Mitch McConnell and Don­ald Trump.

Like the head of her par­ty, Collins is a con artist.

The speech Collins gave was not the kind of speech giv­en by a sen­a­tor who was ever con­flict­ed about their vote. It was a speech of a true believ­er — some­one who wants to see decades of prece­dent upend­ed to advance right wing causes.

And yet, instead of com­ing clean and admit­ting that she ful­ly sup­ports the right wing’s decades-long ini­tia­tive to seize con­trol of Amer­i­ca’s judi­cia­ry and rad­i­cal­ly reshape case law, Collins lame­ly attempt­ed to argue that Brett Kavanaugh pos­es no threat to wom­en’s repro­duc­tive rights, mar­riage equal­i­ty, or checks and balances.

In essence, Collins tried to accom­plish two con­flict­ing objec­tives with her speech: mount a full-throat­ed defense of Brett Kavanaugh, a man who isn’t qual­i­fied to sit on any bench any­where, let alone the Supreme Court, and square that posi­tion with her prized image as an inde­pen­dent-mind­ed “Rock­feller Republican”.

Actions speak loud­er than words, though, and most of the words that Collins spoke today were emp­ty and not defen­si­ble. For exam­ple, she said:

Despite the tur­bu­lent, bit­ter fight sur­round­ing his nom­i­na­tion, my fer­vent hope is that Brett Kavanaugh will work to lessen the divi­sions in the Supreme Court so that we have far few­er 5–4 deci­sions and so that pub­lic con­fi­dence in our Judi­cia­ry and our high­est court is restored.

No rea­son­able observ­er of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, what­ev­er their ide­o­log­i­cal lean­ings, could pos­si­bly say with a straight face that Brett Kavanaugh­’s con­fir­ma­tion will mean less divi­sions on the Unit­ed States Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh is arguably the most par­ti­san, unsta­ble nom­i­nee the Sen­ate has con­sid­ered in decades. His dis­turb­ing tes­ti­mo­ny in front of the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee last week is proof enough of that.

Jus­tice John Paul Stevens cit­ed that tes­ti­mo­ny when he spoke to a group of retirees in Boca Raton, Flori­da, say­ing that Kavan­u­agh should­n’t be con­firmed. (It is extreme­ly unusu­al for a retired Supreme Court jus­tice to express a view­point on whether a nom­i­nee ought to be con­firmed or not.)

“They sug­gest that he has demon­strat­ed a poten­tial bias involv­ing enough poten­tial lit­i­gants before the court that he would not be able to per­form his full respon­si­bil­i­ties,” said Stevens. “And I think there is mer­it in that crit­i­cism and that the sen­a­tors should real­ly pay atten­tion to it. For the good of the court… it’s not healthy to get a new jus­tice that can only do a part-time job.”

Collins also pre­pos­ter­ous­ly tried to have it both ways with respect to the alle­ga­tions against Kavanaugh: on the one hand, she said she believed Dr. Ford, but on the oth­er hand, she said she took Kavanaugh­’s denials at face value.

The facts pre­sent­ed do not mean that Pro­fes­sor Ford was not sex­u­al­ly assault­ed that night – or at some oth­er time – but they do lead me to con­clude that the alle­ga­tions fail to meet the “more like­ly than not” stan­dard. There­fore, I do not believe that these charges can fair­ly pre­vent Judge Kavanaugh from serv­ing on the Court.

Collins cit­ed due process, pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, and fair­ness as her grounds for giv­ing the incred­i­bly enti­tled and very arro­gant Brett Kavanaugh the ben­e­fit of the doubt. But if she real­ly believes in those prin­ci­ples, why did she call for Al Franken to quit the Sen­ate before the alle­ga­tions against him had even been investigated?

Susan Collins had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a hero, but as it turns out, she was nev­er inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing that path. Unlike Lisa Murkows­ki, who lis­tened to her con­science and vot­ed accord­ing­ly, Collins para­chut­ed in at the very end not to save the day, but to become the chief apol­o­gist for a man that thou­sands of law pro­fes­sors urged her not to put on the Unit­ed States Supreme Court.

Susan Collins would like every­one to believe she’s not like every Repub­li­can: that she does­n’t blind­ly fol­low Don­ald Trump, that she thinks for her­self, that she parts ways with her par­ty on a host of issues. But in real­i­ty, she is a will­ing enabler of Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion and a will­ing col­lab­o­ra­tor of Mitch McConnell’s.

There will be con­se­quences. Collins may, as many peo­ple have sus­pect­ed, may have a deal with Mitch McConnell to sup­port Trump’s judi­cial nom­i­nees. She may think that she can get reelect­ed with McConnel­l’s help in spite of her vote for Kavanaugh.

If she does think that, pro­gres­sive groups say she’s sore­ly mistaken.

“Susan Collins has betrayed the peo­ple, and espe­cial­ly the women and sur­vivors, of Maine,” said the orga­niz­ers of Be A Hero Team, Maine Peo­ple’s Alliance and Main­ers for Account­able Lead­er­ship in a state­ment. “Thou­sands of Main­ers wrote, called, vis­it­ed, protest­ed, begged and plead­ed with Susan Collins to do the right thing — to be a hero — and vote no. She ignored them.”

“Maine deserves a Sen­a­tor who would recoil at the idea of con­firm­ing a proven liar, an emo­tion­al­ly unsta­ble par­ti­san, to the Supreme Court,” they added. “Maine deserves a Sen­a­tor who will believe sur­vivors, who will lis­ten to their sto­ries, and who will rep­re­sent them with hon­or. Susan Collins is no longer capa­ble of that.”

The three groups have for the last sev­er­al weeks been col­lect­ing pledges for a fund that is to be turned over to who­ev­er the Maine Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty nom­i­nates to run against Collins in 2020. The fund was only to be acti­vat­ed in the event that Collins vot­ed for Kavanaugh. Now that she has com­mit­ted to do so, she is guar­an­teed to have a Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent who receives a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar war chest upon the com­mence­ment of their gen­er­al elec­tion campaign.

Collins is aware of the fund and has dis­dain­ful­ly char­ac­ter­ized it as a bribe.

Once again, she is wrong. The fund is a threat, not a bribe. The groups behind it could have sim­ply secured pledges for Collins’ 2020 oppo­nent as a show of force with­out any con­di­tions, but they made the pledges con­di­tion­al on Collins’ vote to give her the ben­e­fit of the doubt, because they tru­ly want­ed her to “be a hero”.

Collins has cho­sen to be an enabler rather than a hero. As far as we’re con­cerned, in the words of Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, she just made a career-end­ing move.