Sen. Susan Collins long ago missed the opportunity to create her own Margaret Chase Smith moment and decry rampant corruption in the White House. Sadly, she has fallen into line behind Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, prioritizing party loyalty.

Collins now floods our airwaves with ads and hopes we’ll forget how she voted to emplace Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. She also voted to confirm lifetime appointments for almost all 112 Trump federal district judge nominees and 48 appellate court judges. All were vetted by the libertarian Federalist Society, which opposes abortion access, gun control, LGBTQ equality, environmental regulations, and labor rights.

One of the judges, Jonathan A. Kobes, was rated “unqualified” by the American Bar Association. Collins cast the decisive affirmative vote producing a 50-50 tie, subsequently broken by Vice President Mike Pence. Collins also voted for ABA-unqualified nominees Leonard Grasz (confirmed 50-48) and Charles Goodwin (52-42).

She has said almost nothing as the President Trump put children into detention camps, demonized asylum seekers, sent his attorney general to foreign capitals to undermine our own national security agencies, parroted specious Russian Intelligence fabrications that Ukraine and not Russia interfered in our 2016 elections, and sent his own personal attorney to find or create “dirt” on Joe Biden in Ukraine.

Now, she hides behind “I may soon be sitting as jury and judge in an impeachment trial in the Senate.” However, she accepted an invitation, along with Sen. Mitt Romney, to visit the White House to meet with the president. In any criminal proceeding, that would be tantamount to the accused “tampering with the jury.”

I was a Republican delegate in Washington state in 1980, and I have voted for Susan Collins in the past. But she has clearly aligned herself with party over country, with politics over principles. I cannot vote for her again.

 

Robert Nelson

Clinton

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