After her oddly full-throated endorsement of preppy drunk assaulter and rageaholic Brett "KavaNut" Kavanaugh's elevation to the Supreme Court -- an endorsement that could have been written by despicable human-turtle hybrid Mitch "Missy" McConnell -- Maine's faux "moderate" Rethuglican Susan Collins will face some angry Mainers when she returns for the Columbus Day weekend and beyond. After pretending to be "undecided" for weeks, it was clear from the strong endorsement that it was just a veneer to preserve her undeserved image of a "moderate" conservative, while voting with neo-fascist fraudster Donald "Rump" Trump nearly 80% of the time. The Portland Press Herald, one of Maine's major papers opposing KavaNut's confirmation, had this to say in an editorial last night:
"Only Collins appears to believe that Kavanaugh considered Roe v. Wade “settled law” or that he was deeply committed to preserving precedent, something legal scholars say is inconsistent with the way the Supreme Court works. It makes precedent when it wants to, and it takes only five votes to do it.It's not that long before she faces voters in November 2020. They should remember and Vote. Her. Out.
Maybe Collins will be proven right. Maybe Kavanaugh will defy the experts and not join a series of 5-4 decisions like Citizens United, the 2008 case that eliminated the spending limits for electioneering by corporations, or last year’s Janus decision, which overturned a 40-year “settled law” precedent governing public-sector unions’ ability to collect fees.
Maybe no more witnesses will corroborate the accounts of the three women who have come forward so far with stories about their mistreatment at Kavanaugh’s hands. Maybe he will never again show the angry, intemperate and partisan face he revealed to a national TV audience on Sept. 27, calling into question his capacity to be an impartial and dispassionate judge.
Maybe none of those things will happen. But if they do, Collins’ vote should be remembered for a long time." (our emphasis)
BONUS: Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent on Collins' "bad faith" performance --
It was obvious from the moment Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) began her speech Friday that she’d announce her support for the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. And so she did — in a performance that was saturated in misdirection and bad faith, making it the perfect capstone to the Republican treatment of this whole affair.
Collins condemned Democrats for having their minds made up before Kavanaugh was nominated (as if Republicans did not), expressed dismay at misrepresentations of his record (though not his flood of deceptions), and decried the “dark money” mobilized to oppose him (the dark money mobilized to back him didn’t seem to annoy her).
Meanwhile, her treatment of the Christine Blasey Ford affair was so shamelessly disingenuous that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that her call for an FBI inquiry was really about gaining the cover to do what she intended to do all along. Hearing her speak, it seemed she regarded the biggest injustice in the whole saga to be the fact that Ford’s charges were leaked, putting Republicans through the inconvenience of having to deal with them. (our emphasis)She's as conscience- free as everyone else in her rotted out party.
