Senator Susan Collins: Resign, Retire, Get Out of Town Fast

All this concern over Brett Kavanaugh’s ability to remember-while-drunk obscured yet another more significant vetting malfunction: the psychological demeanor and intelligence of the Senators who questioned him. Too many Senators who interviewed this nominee for The Supreme Court failed to effectively remember and efficiently process pertinent information at hand. In other words, the job interviewers who were duty-bound to “advise and consent” failed miserably.

No Senator illustrated this procedural incompetence more vividly than Maine’s own Susan “Clueless” Collins.

Now before you start drinking the Kool-Aid from FOX NOOZ about her “distinguished” and “non-partisan” and “imminent” fairness, go online. Listen to the lengthy speech she gave from the Senate floor on Friday, October, 5th. Really listen to it.

If you set you own opinions aside long enough for some critical analysis, dear citizens, you’ll begin to understand. You’ll begin to see that all Republican public servants like her who profess to be caring and conscientious simply cannot be that way when they vote. They must do and say what their GOP masters tell them to do and say. Even the most independent of Republican Thinkers must retreat into braindead sheep mode when decisions are to be made.

They must obey their party: ITS. THE. LAW. It’s the unspoken yet mandatory GROUPTHINK policy the Republican Party demands from all its members. As the GOP’s good shepherd, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell demands that his flock do his bidding, else be thrown upon the rocks and forever cast out of the Senate chambers.

As the Secret Police from “Evita” sing, “We have ways of making you vote for us, Or at least of making you abstain…”

But in this case, it also took a certain blend of gullibility, tempered by fear and stupidity, to go along with the rest of the flock and to approve Kavanaugh’s nomination. Susan Collins, who initially hid under the radar by proclaiming herself “undecided,” turned out to have the right mix after all. So her pro-Kavanaugh stance that Friday came as no real surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the current political climate on Capital Hill.

The real surprise came during her 45-minute defensive address she gave Friday afternoon.

Here was the perfect opportunity for Collins to explain, then clarify, her decision…AND also to reassure listeners about the effectiveness of American Democracy at work. Unfortunately for her constituency, she didn’t do that. Instead of reassurance, she resorted to the timeworn talking points Good Shepherd Mitch and the boys wanted her to spout. You know, that familiar “Gee whiz, the Democrats just won’t let us do our jobs and make America great again!” rhetoric. When Clueless Collins tried to use this Trumpropaganda schtick, though, the DUH factor in her reasoning came into startling focus.

She not only arbitrarily excused Kavanaugh’s inexcusable combativeness during the hearing, she also believed his self-serving promises about not overturning Roe V. Wade during their personal one-on-one meetings. Like, The Supreme Court would never overturn previous decisions? DUH! Come on, Clueless! It’s happened before, it’ll happen again.

Besides, nominees for The Supreme Court never know which cases they’ll be hearing or which decisions they’ll be rendering until they actually become members of The Supreme Court. Wake up and smell the coffee, Buttercup. Any nominee who misleads you that way is disingenuous, to say the least. Pardon my sexist analogy, but he sounds a lot like the slick Romeo who promises you the sun and the moon on Saturday night, then leaves, never to return, on Sunday morning — after he gets what he wants.

Far worse, though, was the way Collins began lamenting about the divisiveness of our country and its political process — after she and her party had, in fact, created said pervasive political divide in the first place. But every story needs some bad guys. So Collins kept her party’s fascist myth alive by denouncing the Democrats — who else? — as villains.

Although Collins didn’t mention “Democrat” or the Senator’s name, it was obvious the villain in her speech wasn’t a good Republican. She carried on about how this other Senator had declared — before the confirmation hearings had even begun! — that he wouldn’t vote for Kavanaugh — EVEN THOUGH HE HADN’T EVER MET OR SPOKE WITH HIM! Oh, the heartbreak! Oh, the devastation such unfair political agendas can bring! And yet, when she and her GOP cohorts did the very same thing to Merrick Garland, she was perfectly A-OK with it, no problem. (Remember, it’s only the height of incivility if the Democrats do it.)

Just where was Senator Collins when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court Justice? Funny, Mitch refused to consider his nomination. He refused to even talk to him. So did the other Republicans. So did Senator Collins. Where was her outrage then?

And how fair and non-partisan was she when Mitch declared he was going to do everything he possibly could to make Obama a one-term president? How much time and effort did she and her GOP masters actually spend trying to work with President Obama and the other Democrats? More importantly, why didn’t she and the other Republicans try reaching across the aisle this time?

Then even more DUHs came out a couple of days later, on Sunday morning.

As if to hammer home her inability to connect the dots, Clueless Collins showed up on CBS TV’s “Face The Nation” (with Mitch not far behind). This time, host John Dickerson helped bring out even more of her cluelessness in the interview.

Collins admitted she believed Kavanaugh was innocent, in part, because no one came forward in any of the 12 FBI interviews to say ‘ I was the one who picked you up and drove you home.’

So? Professor Ford repeatedly asserted she didn’t know how she got home. So why did Collins assume Ford was driven home — especially when Ford couldn’t remember the address of the house where she’d been assaulted? Kavanaugh’s accuser could have walked home by herself. Or called a cab. Or taken a bus. Or borrowed a bike and rode it home.

Collins simply couldn’t get over the pain and heartbreak that poor Brett Kavanaugh went through. “…His anger and his anguish — I think is, are, understandable given that he’s been accused of being involved in gang rapes of women. I mean, that is a devastating allegation…,” Collins declared. Uh-huh. Kind of like the ones poor Hillary Clinton faced when the Far Right, with its GOP enablers, accused her of killing that guy who was involved in the Whitewater scandal.

But you have to wonder how many tears Collins shed for poor Hillary. Or for Kavanaugh’s accusers of sexual impropriety…Apparently, not a lot.

So determined was Collins to tow her GOP party line that she became oblivious to Kavanaugh’s role in his own pain and heartbreak. She failed to understand how Kavanaugh was really his own worst enemy. Remember, Accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford (AKA Professor Ford) passed a lie detector test, while Brett Kavanaugh, The Accused, refused to take one. Why?

And why did Kavanaugh also refuse to ask Trump for an investigation to clear his name or request one himself?

In her fervor to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court bench, Collins excused his questionable behaviors once more.

In the interview, Dickerson could have asked her about this inherent bias. But he didn’t. Collins herself could have brought up why she dismissed Kavanaugh’s failure to take a lie detector test or to request another investigation. But she didn’t.

And yet, she never passed up any opportunity to blame or denounce anyone in the Democratic party.

Once again, as she did in her 45-minute speech, Collins couldn’t resist slamming the Democrats on air.

Dickerson asked, “Do you think Democrats who were all(sic), Democrats were working in good faith to try to find out what really happened?”

“Well,” Collins began, “I can’t help but think that there were some who wanted to use Dr. Ford, and that really saddens me because otherwise they would have gone with her expressed wishes, which is to have been interviewed in private, to have kept her allegations confidential. They still could have been throughly explored, and I think that’s really shameful. I don’t think the system treated her well.”

No, I don’t think YOU treated her well, Senator Collins. What’s really shameful about this whole thing is the way you, along with your GOP masters, immediately assumed the Democrats — not her friends, not her family, not the media — violated Dr. Ford’s privacy when YOU had no evidence to prove your assumption. Enough already!

Spare us your “Golly, gee, let’s all work together now” rhetoric. You blew it: you had a chance to do the right thing, but you decided to remain the puppet that the GOP puppet masters wanted you to be. You had a choice to make then; and now, voters have a choice to make about you. But why wait for another election day?

Maybe the best thing you could do for your country now is to just resign. Just resign your position of “public service” and creep back to Maine with your tail between your legs before your constituents vote you out of public office. At least that way you could still leave the Senate with a little dignity intact. Just go away.