If you had to pick a reliable Republican senator, it wouldn’t be Susan Collins.
Even though she confirmed Brett Kavanaugh and voted to acquit Trump, she made it clear she was on the fence the whole time.
And now the Boston Globe shows she’s trailing her Democrat opponent in the polls:
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine is narrowly trailing her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, the incumbent’s reelection bid hindered by diminished popularity among moderate Democrats and independent voters who’ve soured on her since President Trump’s election, according to a new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of likely Maine voters.
They favor Gideon, the speaker of Maine’s House of Representatives, over Collins, 46 percent to 41 percent, according to the survey of 500 likely voters, the bulk of which was conducted before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was announced Friday.
Interviews with several respondents suggest the Senate battle over replacing Ginsburg will complicate Collins’s efforts to woo moderate voters while keeping stalwart Republicans behind her as she seeks to close the gap with Gideon, whose 5-point lead is within the poll’s margin of error.
Few voters interviewed were impressed with Collins’s announcement that she thinks the winner of the Nov. 3 election should make the nomination.
“It’s great, but I don’t trust that she will follow through,” said Lucy Bisson of Lewiston, a registered Republican and self-described “moderate” who has backed Collins in all her previous Senate races but plans to vote for Gideon in November. “At this point, I don’t trust her to follow through on what she says.”
Collins’s stance on the Supreme Court also irked Brenda Piawlock, a Trump supporter in Mason Township who plans to vote for Collins. “I’m not impressed at all. I think she should vote, and they should put one in there. Donald Trump is our president right now, and he has every right to do it — and she better back him on it,” said the 62-year-old cranberry farmer.
Looks like she’s not impressing anyone!
Maybe it’s because she broke with Trump and said she’ll vote “no” on any Supreme Court nominee he puts forth?
The Hill has more details on that:
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is facing a tough reelection bid, said on Tuesday that she will vote against a Supreme Court nominee if one is brought to the Senate floor before the November election.
“My statement was a model of clarity. … I made it very clear, yes, that I did not think there should be a vote prior to the election,” Collins told reporters when asked if she would oppose a nominee before the election.
Collins added that her decision was based not on the nominee but on the proximity to the election and the decision by Republicans in 2016 to refuse to move forward with Merrick Garland, then-President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.
“If there is [a vote], I would oppose the nominee, not because I might not support that nominee under normal circumstances, but we’re simply too close to the election, and in the interest of being fair to the American people — and consistent since it was with the Garland nomination that the decision was made not to proceed, a decision that I disagreed with, but my position did not prevail — I now think we need to play by the same set of rules,” she said.
Collins just made it clear she’s absolutely worthless.
Even Mitt Romney said he’ll partake in confirmation hearings and give Trump’s nominee a fair vote.
And here's what Trump had to say about Collins's announcement from Yahoo:
And after her remarks were public, the president came after Collins directly.
"I think Susan Collins is very badly hurt by her statement yesterday," Trump said Monday morning on Fox News. He said the same about Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who expressed a similar sentiment to Collins', though the Alaska senator is not up for re-election. "I think that Susan Collins is going to be hurt very badly — her people aren't going to take this. People are not going to take it."
Trump's comments are a major blow to Collins, exacerbating the already fraught dynamics of the issue for her.
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