GOP Sen. Susan Collins is feeling pressure from anti-Trump groups as impeachment closes in

Sen. Susan Collins, Republican from Maine, is one of the recipients of pressure from two new Republican groups opposed to Donald Trump, and it has her fretting. Republicans for the Rule of Law and the new Lincoln Project are both targeting so-called moderate Republicans and pressuring them to secure a fair trial of Trump in the Senate.

"Call Sen. Collins and tell her these witnesses must testify," says a new ad from Republicans for the Rule of Law, which will be running in Maine on both Fox & Friends and Hannity. Jennifer Horn, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, told the Portland Press Herald, "We will be watching very closely what Sen. Collins and everyone else does. […] Where she falls on impeachment will have a significant influence on—I don't want to say target because I don't like that word—but it will have an influence on whether she is on the list of Republican senators whose seats we're looking at."

Now that her close friend Sen. Lisa Murkowski has publicly criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for telling the world that he has no intention of conducting a fair trial, Collins has to be feeling even more pressure. But that doesn't mean she's going to get off the fence or be taking any stand.

“My hope is that the Senate leaders will negotiate the rules for the trial, just as Republican Senator Trent Lott and Democratic Senator Tom Daschle did for the trial of President Clinton,” she said in a statement released Thursday. Because Collins' "hopes" for her party doing the right thing always work out so well. "I take seriously the oath I will swear to render 'impartial justice' in the impeachment trial," she said, before once again playing the victim. "Threats from both the left and the right will have zero influence on my decisions." Right. As if she doesn't have Trump's endorsement, because she's so independent. As if she didn't secure an endorsement from crazy-ass former Gov. Paul LePage by promising she'd be as Trumpy as she needed to be.

Such a profile in courage she is, with her hopes and her sternly worded letters. She's so courageous that she still hasn't even thanked Donald Trump for his ringing endorsement of her.