Category: SusanCollins

Collins earns a new nickname in Moscow Mitch’s impeachment game: Sidekick Sue

Posted on by Joan McCarter

There's a new nickname for Maine Sen. Susan Collins floating around the internet: It’s #SidekickSue, in recognition that she's Moscow Mitch McConnell’s most valuable player when he's trying to fix a Senate vote. That the fix was in (and that she had a key role in it) was glaringly apparently Thursday night in the choreographed release of statements from Collins and Sen. Lamar Alexander regarding whether they wanted to compel additional witnesses and testimony in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. (Collins said yea, while Alexander said nay.)

The final cynical fillip came Friday morning from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the other reliable player in McConnell's game, with her duplicitous embrace of the cover-up with crocodile tears: "It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed." But she did her job for McConnell, and she's providing the cover Collins needs. It's not going to work this time.

The jig has been up for Collins since she betrayed every principle she previously touted and voted in favor of Brett Kavanaugh’s conformation to the Supreme Court. "Just as we've known she would, Collins announced her support for witnesses only when the votes were fixed to block witnesses and rig the trial to cover-up the corruption of Donald Trump," Marie Follayttar, co-director of Mainers for Accountable Leadership, told Common Dreams. "We see Collins for who she is—Sidekick Sue to Moscow Mitch and a corrupt and despotic Trump."

Collins has chosen her side, and Maine knows it. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

Collins, Alexander prove that fix has been in all along on Trump’s impeachment trial

Posted on by Joan McCarter

There will almost certainly not be a 50-50 tie in the Senate impeachment trial on whether to have additional witnesses and documents. Sen. Susan Collins, almost immediately following the closing of Thursday night's session, showed that she'd been given the "hall pass" from McConnell to vote "yes" on witnesses. In a three-paragraph statement that was probably written before the trial even began.

Moments after Collins’ statement, as if it were totally choreographed to try to make her look like the hero, Sen. Lamar Alexander announced that he is a "no" because "there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the U.S. Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense." He goes on to say essentially, yes Trump definitely did it, but we don't need to impeach him over it.

If, as expected, Sen. Mitt Romney votes for witnesses, that leaves just Sen. Lisa Murkowski as an unknown. She’s said she's thinking on it. That's most likely false, because the main thing has been trying to give Collins cover, and McConnell is not going to allow Chief Justice Roberts being in the position of having to decide whether or not to break a tie.

We have to end their hold on the Senate. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as majority leader.

Senate Republicans: Screw what voters want. It’s impeachment cover-up time

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Senate Republicans have come back to where they started: they’re going to stage an impeachment cover-up, and they’re not going to half-ass it. With Donald Trump in full public bully mode and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell twisting arms behind the scenes, the number of Republicans willing to vote for a fair trial is expected to be less than the necessary four—and even the one or two Republicans who vote to hear from witnesses will do so with McConnell’s permission, knowing that they aren’t changing the outcome.

This recommitment to cover-up comes as poll after poll shows anywhere from 66% to 80% of Americans—including substantial percentages of Republicans—wanting witnesses in the impeachment trial. Republican senators do not care.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s take is that “For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate, and still the House would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office.” But we never expected Graham to stand up to the latest powerful figure he’s attached himself to in a bid for greater relevance.

”We don’t need Mr. Bolton to come in and to extend this show longer, along with any other witnesses people might want, and occupy all of our time here in the Senate for the next few weeks, maybe even months,” said Sen. John Cornyn. Heaven forbid the Senate waste its time on frivolous things like finding out how far the president went to undermine American democracy! 

Sen. Susan Collins may vote to hear witnesses, with McConnell’s permission, so she can keep duping news outlets like The New York Times into writing long-discredited nonsense like that “She is the rare member of her party who still seeks to appeal to a broad range of independent and even Democratic voters as well as Republicans.”

Senate Republicans have made it clear: They will acquit Trump even if they are somehow forced to acknowledge that he did what all the evidence shows he did, withholding military aid to Ukraine to pressure the nation to help him out in the 2020 elections by digging up dirt—or at least publicly announcing that there was dirt to be dug—on the Democratic opponent he saw as most threatening at that time. Senate Republicans don’t care what he did. They just want to stay in power, and they think Trump is their best bet for doing so. And even though voters have seen through their intent to cover up, they’re going through with it anyway, because apparently Republicans are convinced it’s better to have people know you’re covering something up than to have them knowing what lies under the covers.

Collins’ tepid support for impeachment witnesses isn’t playing well back home

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Sen. Susan Collins, last seen in high manufactured dudgeon over incivility in Donald Trump's impeachment hearing, seems less concerned over the revelation from former national security adviser John Bolton that Trump did indeed try to extort Ukraine to influence the 2020 election. The reports about Bolton’s upcoming book "strengthen the case" for hearing witnesses, she said, which some analysts are taking as support for calling witnesses. It's not, though; it's Collins holding her finger in the wind.

She needs to be seen as open to calling witnesses because her performance thus far is not playing particularly well back home. The Portland Press Herald published an op-ed over the weekend lambasting her stunt during the House managers’ presentation, in which she sent a sternly worded note to Chief Justice John Roberts saying that Democrats were being mean. "Instead of demanding to see every last shred of evidence of the president's conduct before she voted on whether he is guilty of manipulating America’s foreign policy and national security interests to cheat in an election, she chose to get lost in the weeds" of procedure, editorial page editor Greg Kesich wrote.

Collins has chosen her side, and Maine knows it. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

Those procedural weeds have nothing to do with getting at the truth, something that Amy Fried, professor of political science at the University of Maine, is writing about at the Bangor Daily News. "In one universe, that of televised ads run by her campaign, Susan Collins is a stalwart independent," Fried writes. "In an alternative universe where Collins was independent, initially she would have vigorously backed the efforts to receive witnesses and documents blocked by the White House."

Collins' Kavanaugh vote should have been a lesson to her about just how shaky her image as an "independent" is back home. Her performance in this impeachment, thus far, is eroding it further. It could end up being her total undoing.

Impeachment witnesses are ‘increasingly likely,’ but top Republicans are still pushing cover-up

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Republican sources are telling reporters that the news about former national security adviser John Bolton’s book makes it more likely that witnesses will be called at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial—but the dam hasn’t exactly broken wide open, and top Senate Republicans are still fighting to keep the cover-up intact.

“I think it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton,” Sen. Mitt Romney said Monday. Sen. Susan Collins said the revelations that Bolton’s book manuscript recounts Trump saying that yes, he was holding up military aid to Ukraine until the country dug for dirt on his political opponents, “strengthen the case for witnesses and have prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues.” But no Republican senators previously opposed to calling witnesses has come forward to say they’ve changed their minds.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who reportedly feels blindsided by the Bolton news getting out at this juncture and released a statement saying he “did not have any advance notice” that this was coming—is not any more open to witnesses. Senate Majority Whip John Thune told reporters that “I don’t think that anything that he’s going to say changes the fact...I think people kind of know what the fact pattern is.” Despite all those times Republicans complained that there were no firsthand witnesses who heard directly from Trump that he was holding up the Ukraine aid to get an investigation of a political opponent, the emergence of a witness who could provide exactly that testimony changes nothing.

And in Thune’s telling, calling Bolton would just kind of be a big hassle. “If you start calling him, then the Democrats are going to want to call Mulvaney and want to call Pompeo ... and our guys are going to want to start calling witnesses on the other side to illuminate their case,” he said, continuing “And I think that gets us into this endless cycle and this drags on for weeks and months in the middle of a presidential election where people are already voting. My view is the fact pattern is what it is. I don’t think it’s going to change.” 

Oh. The fact pattern is what it is? So basically, all that talk of how Democrats hadn’t adequately made the case that Donald Trump withheld congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine because he wanted the country to interfere in the 2020 elections was just more Republican lies. It’s hard to draw any other conclusion from the fact that the number two Republican in the Senate says hearing from a firsthand witness who’s a longtime Republican official wouldn’t add any facts.

Some Republicans are operating with a little less bluster and bravado, though they’re still looking to cut a favorable deal. Sen. Pat Toomey wants a trade: one relevant witness to what Trump did for one irrelevant Republican witness with which to attack the very Democrats Trump was trying to attack all along. Sen. Lindsey Graham has a proposal to make it look like Republicans took Bolton seriously without actually allowing the public to hear what he has to say. And so on. 

There may be some cracks in the unified Republican determination for a cover-up, but there are just as many Senate Republicans frantically slapping spackle onto those cracks.

Days after ‘head on a pike’ outrage, Republican warns of ‘repercussions’ for defying Trump

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Republican senators were outraged when Rep. Adam Schiff mentioned the report that the White House was threatening Republicans with their “head on a pike” if they voted for witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Outraged! Sen. Susan Collins violated the decorum of the Senate chamber by bursting out with “That's not true.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski claimed that “That’s where he lost me.”

So: no threats to Republicans over their votes on impeachment witnesses, huh? Someone should tell Trump's House allies that.

Rep. Mark Meadows told Norah O’Donnell that “I don't want to speak for my Senate colleagues. But there are always political repercussions for every vote you take.” Yeah, like the kind of political repercussions that Team Trump specializes in dealing out. The kind you might metaphorically call “head on a pike.”

But we’re not exactly dealing with the brain trust here. Rep. Doug Collins had a challenge for Democrats: “The question needs to be flipped. Where is a courageous Democrat who will actually look at the facts and vote in favor of not impeaching this president? ” (Uhh, Doug, he was already impeached.)

Republican senators sure are selective in what they find offensive in Trump’s impeachment trial

Posted on by Joan McCarter

The third day of Donald Trump's impeachment trial once again featured Republican senators competing with each other to see who could show the most disdain for the idea of their constitutional duty and the oath they took to provide impartial justice. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, apparently felt one-upped by the odious Martha McSally of Arizona in the race to be Trump's favorite woman senator, so she stepped up her game by maligning decorated American combat veteran Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who still serves in uniform and who has been subject to threats of violence since he testified in the House impeachment investigation.

Then there's the ongoing middle-school brat behavior on display for the handful of reporters who are allowed to tell us about it. Which, by the way, Sen. Susan Collins thinks is too many. She wants one whole group of reporters, those sitting in the front row of the gallery where they can actually see what's happening, to be booted—presumably so they don't have a clear view of the Republican senators who are doodling, playing with toys, working on crosswords, chomping gum, and wandering around the chamber and leaving it for long stretches at a time. All in defiance of the rules they swore to follow. And once again, Chief Justice John Roberts might as well have been a potted plant in response.

They all complain that they're not hearing anything new. They're all saying it verbatim, repeatedly and uniformly, almost as if they have nothing new to say. But given that they're also not paying attention, perhaps they're missing the new news.

What they do selectively hear, however, is horribly offensive to their very delicate ears. Collins tattled to Chief Justice Roberts that Rep. Jerry Nadler had suggested that Republicans were abetting a cover-up—that one deeply offended Lisa Murkowski, too.

They were even offended by Rep. Adam Schiff's remarkable closing remarks Thursday night: "Because in America, right matters. Truth matters. If not, no Constitution can protect us. If not, we are lost." Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming was deeply offended on behalf of all his Republican colleagues who had to sit through Schiff's uncomfortable truths, none of which any Republican will really contest—they just think it doesn't matter.

Oh, the humanity. By the way, not a single one of them publicly chastised their colleague Blackburn for her gross attack on Lt. Col. Vindman's patriotism.

Susan Collins finds a principle to stand behind: Tattling on ‘both sides’ in the name of civility

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Just when you thought Maine Sen. Susan Collins couldn't get any worse, you find out she's a tattle-tale. Yes, the one thing that woke Chief Justice John Roberts out of his stupor during the ongoing impeachment trial was a note from Collins tattling on Rep. Jerry Nadler for being mean during his statement Tuesday night.

She told Politico she was "stunned" that Nadler would suggest that Senate Republicans were aiding in Trump's cover-up of his Ukraine dealings, and felt compelled to tell teacher Roberts that Nadler and White House counsel Pat Cipollone were breaking the rules. "So I did write a note raising the issue of whether there’d been a violation of the rules," she said. "I gave that note to [Senate Parliamentarian] Laura Dove and shortly thereafter the chief justice did admonish both sides. And I was glad that he did." Which is quintessential Collins: more concerned about decorum in the Senate chamber than Trump extorting a foreign leader to interfere in our election on his behalf. And clearly more invested in helping cover that up, since she voted against every single amendment brought by Democrats trying to expand the record with new witnesses and documents.

Collins has chosen her side, and Maine knows it. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

Collins apparently also remains unconcerned with the behavior of her fellow Republicans, who are breaking all the rules set for them in an impeachment hearing by leaving the chamber for long stretches of time, chatting, snapping gum, doing crosswords, playing with toys, and reading books. She's not tattling to Roberts about that, and reminding him that he's supposed to keeping her colleagues in line. That’s presumably because it's Republicans and not "both sides" misbehaving.

Majority of Maine voters say Collins is ‘driven by political self-interest, not principle’

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Susan Collins is damned if she does stick with Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump on impeachment and damned if she doesn't. The filing deadline for the primary for her Senate seat is March 16, and while she's got the backing of the state's rabid Republicans now, they would turn on her in a split second. Former Gov. Paul LePage, who's endorsed her, has to be casting a beady eye on the seat in case she strays. While Collins has to keep looking over her right shoulder, the rest of Maine is bailing on her, according to the latest polling by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group for the Democratic Senate Majority PAC.

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Pollster Geoff Garin points out, based on the polling, that "Maine voters already see Collins as someone who who makes decisions based on what's best for her and least risky politically. They don't see her as acting on principle or what's best for Maine." That makes her voting lock-step with Republicans against witnesses and documents at Trump's impeachment trial on Tuesday a problem for her. That's because 71% of respondents in Maine said the Senate "[s]hould insist on seeing documents and call witnesses." That's on top of the 53% who say that Trump abused the power of his office, including 57% of independents. She has no room to maneuver here.

This comes on the heels of a Morning Consult survey showing Collins to be the least-popular senator with home-state voters in the entire country, in either party. What was remarkable in that survey, conducted quarterly in every state, wasn't necessarily that she's 10 points underwater in her approval rating with Maine's registered voters, 52% disapprove to 42% approve—a drop of 10 net points since the last survey in September. The big deal is that 93% of Maine voters are familiar enough with her to have an opinion about her. Just 7% percent of Maine voters don't look at her favorably or unfavorably.

In this context, this conclusion from the polling for Senate Majority PAC has got to be striking terror in her heart: "Maine voters do not trust Susan Collins to put principle above politics, and if she votes to acquit President Trump a majority say it will be because she is following a party line and doing what she believes is in her own political interest."