Susan Collins is up to her old tricks, making up new rules to avoid talking Trump and playing the victim
18 July 2020
Sen. Susan Collins’ schtick is getting really, really old. All the way back in September 2018, she was throwing her own pity party about all the mean people pledging their loose change to help defeat her in 2020. She's still at it, trying to make the amazing display of democracy on the part of small dollar donors into something nefarious. It's a bribe, she says in an extremely convoluted message to would-be donors.
First, she says the money was going to be a bribe to her, Collins, intended to make her not vote for Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. Now she says it's a “BRIBE“ that her Democratic opponent Sara Gideon is taking. (And yes, the all-caps are hers.) It's "the most out-of state $ in Maine history," this fundraising letter proclaims. As in $3 from tens of thousands of people who live all over the country. As opposed to the mysterious six-figure donation Collins secured from a company that may or may not truly exist based in Hawaii. Oh, Susan. But that's not all the Collinsing she did this week. Not by a long shot.
For months now, Collins has been refusing to weigh in on Trump. She's refused to say whether she voted for him in the presidential primary back in March, though his was the only name on the Republican ballot and she did vote. Asked this week if she'll support Trump's reelection, she bleated: "I am concentrating on my own campaign and I am not going to get involved in presidential politics. I'm going to concentrate on my own race." An intrepid Maine reporter pushed back, saying: "You did get involved in 2016, very publicly." In 2016, Collins went so far as to write an op-ed detailing why she wouldn't vote for him.
"Right," she said. "I wasn't on the ballot, I wasn't up for reelection. I didn't have my own race to worry about at that point." New rule! Susan Collins won't weigh in on Trump when voters are deciding whether or not to reelect her. She wants it to be a mystery. Because in the last four years Trump has changed her mind about his fitness to serve? Because Trump has "learned" how to be president?
She's getting hackier by the day. That's what being exposed for your true self, and having your job jeopardized in the offing, will do.