Susan Collins is posing as a 'moderate' by voting against one bad Trump nominee. Don't buy it

Now that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a bit of a cushion in his GOP majority, expect Maine Sen. Susan Collins to start doing some cleanup ahead of her 2020 re-election campaign. In fact, the Maine Republican has already started on her efforts to reclaim the mantle of a "mavericky" and "moderate" Republican. She was the first Republican senator out of the gate to say she opposed Individual 1's emergency declaration for his wall, an initial attempt at distancing herself.

Most recently, she's announced her opposition to one of Trump's judicial nominees, Chad Readler, for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Readler served as a lead lawyer in the Justice Department's decision to refuse to defend the Affordable Care Act and instead argue that the law's protections on pre-existing conditions should be found unconstitutional. That Justice Department decision led officials to resign from the department. That's why Collins is opposing him, supposedly.

But she's just fine with another deplorable Trump nominee. In fact, she voted forAllison Jones Rushing, who became the youngest lifetime judge on a U.S. Circuit Court. She's only 37, and has practiced for just nine years. She has tried a measly four cases, none of them as lead counsel. She's not even admitted to the bar in North Carolina, the state from which she was nominated. Her Judiciary Committee hearing was conducted during a Senate recess, so only two Republicans were present to pass her out of committee. She was completely unvetted by the Senate.

That's because she's got a disturbing record for one so young. For part of her short career, she worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian organization that has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. She has argued that there are "moral and practical" reasons for banning same-sex marriage.

Did that bother Collins? Not enough to make her vote against Rushing. So when she comes hat in hand to Maine voters, declaring that she's voted against McConnell and voted against Trump, remember this: It's not about principle for Collins. It's about trying to hang on to her Senate seat. When it really matters, there's not a hair's breadth between her and Trump.