Annie Clark, the Communications Director for Senator Susan Collins (R, Maine) argues in a recent Portland Press Herald Letter To The Editor that Sen. Collins’ voting record over the past year and a half is being unfairly reported. She claims that statistics are being used to skew the reporting, and is in turn using statistics to make her case. I would expect that the Communications Director for a politician to defend their boss, that is their job after all.
However, she conveniently ignores several key facts that support what she claims is misleading reporting. Susan Collins has voted for:
All but two of Trump’s Cabinet nominees: DeVos and Pruitt. In the case of Betsy DeVos, Collins is on the Committee that pre-approves the nominee before the vote goes to the floor, and she voted to allow the vote. She then voted No on the floor after calculating that the nomination would go through without her. She did a similar calculation on Pruitt. With very few exceptions, this Cabinet is uniquely UNqualified for their positions. As examples, Education Secretary DeVos is dismantling student protections against financial abuse by the education loan industry, and is shifting government support from public education to for-profit schools from K-12 all the way through college. EPA Director Pruitt, and now his successor, is rolling back environmental protections. HUD Secretary Carson is making it harder for the working poor to afford housing. Interior Secretary Zinke is selling off National Monuments to the fossil fuel industry. The list goes on and on.
The GOP Tax overhaul: Prior to the vote last winter to rewrite the US Tax Law to heavily favor the 1% and large corporations, Sen. Collins “promised” to vote no because of its provisions to defund the Affordable Care Act’s Individual Market subsidies. She then almost immediately started backpedaling on that with multiple layers of backtracking, going from her initial “I will not vote for this” to “I will not vote for this unless [other bill] is passed first to protect the ACA”, to “I will not vote for this unless Leader McConnell promises that [other bill] will be voted on to protect the ACA immediately after” to “I will not vote for this unless Leader McConnell promises to hold a vote on [other bill] to protect the ACA in January”. She then voted for the tax bill, that [other bill] never materialized, the ACA subsidies are decimated, and the deficit has skyrocketed.
Collins has already started a similar backpedal regarding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court of the United States. She had originally stated that she would not vote to confirm any Justice that is hostile to the settled law of Roe v Wade, which legalized a woman’s choice to terminate an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy. Yet she has already voted to confirm multiple Justices on the Federal Appeals Circuits and SCOTUS that are proven hostile to Roe v Wade. And she has also backpedaled on this with the specific context of Brett Kavanaugh by refusing to consider the nomination source of the Federalist Society, which pre-vetted all of Trump’s judicial nominees to be hostile to Roe v Wade, and his already publicly known history of judgements and dissentions all in favor of restricting or denying a woman’s choice, rolling back environmental protections, voting rights, equality, etc, etc, etc.
Susan Collins is not bipartisan. She is a political opportunist hack at best, voting in favor of whatever party has the majority at the moment. She has voted to confirm almost all Supreme Court nominees that happened during her time in the Senate, regardless of ideology, and while she bemoaned the changes to Senatorial procedure for Judicial nomination confirmations, she voted them anyway. She has expressed “concern” over the kidnapping of migrant children from their parents seeking asylum by Federal authorities, but did nothing, actually worse than nothing as she opposed a topic specific Democratic bill to address this calling it “too broad”. She expressed as “unbelievable” over statements by Trump wanting to stop the Special Council investigation over Russian interference in the 2016 election, but has done nothing to protect the investigation.
Her message is one of carefully crafted narration, but her actions are oftentimes the exact opposite. She will do just enough bipartisan effort to lend a veneer of credibility to her claim of being a bipartisan moderate who happens to be a Republican, but the truth is, she is not. She is a craven political opportunist bending to the whim of whoever is in charge.