"Modus operandi of Susan Collins: partisan when it matters--Principled when it couldn't matter less"
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Herein lies the modus operandi of Susan Collins: partisan when it matters, and principled when it couldn’t matter less. And though she has become adept at picking moments here and there to demonstrate that she is capable of standing up for the people she serves — her short-lived healthcare heroism being the most notable example — her inability to imagine public service as a skin you wear rather than a costume you put on for the cameras has left her incapable of carrying on the legacy of her childhood hero. Once thought of as the center of our national politics, she has revealed herself to be little more than the vestigial tail of a Republican caucus bolting away from that center — well-distanced from its foaming mouth, but never really far behind.
It’s possible that an 18-year-old Susan Collins went home to Caribou dreaming that she would one day help transfer mountains of money from her friends and neighbors to the wealthiest heirs of the nation, but I doubt it. More likely, she aspired to be the guardian not only of an endangered strain of Republican ideology, but of Republican dignity in the face of sheer madness as well. She probably hoped to lead as much from the pure center of our civic morality as she did from the center of our politics. And she almost certainly longed to uphold the wisdom of the Declaration of Conscience, which warned us so presciently: I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear… Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory.
Susan Collins is a Republican. No one is asking her to be anything else. But the least we can ask — the least we must insist — is that she not actively abet the GOP in extinguishing what’s left of Smith’s flame. The choice to stand with Donald Trump 50 percent of the time (to say nothing of 81.5 percent) is no more the choice of a principled moderate than the choice to jump halfway off of a bridge. And that is precisely where Susan Collins finds herself today, flailing wildly to justify brazen middle fingers to the middle class at a moment that calls for declarations of conscience more than any in recent memory.
As Maine voters turn on her — and it has already begun — Collins will come to regret her swan dive into the depths of partisan depravity. Presented with a fresh McCarthy, she cowered where Smith stood tall. And as Democrats win elections and Trumpists tighten their grip on the GOP, the only one facing extinction now is her: the voice of the once-proud moderate, trembling into irrelevance.
MORE:
https://medium.com/@danielcluchey/the-tragedy-of-susan-collins-39ff30a32ecd
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