Opinion | Mainers Are ‘Disappointed,’ Too, Susan Collins

She voted for Justice Kavanaugh in part because she took him at his word that abortion rights were a settled precedent. Then, last week, Justice Kavanaugh voted with the conservative minority on the court to uphold a Louisiana law that would have severely restricted a woman’s right to abortion in that state. In a statement, Senator Collins said that critics who saw this vote as a complete repudiation of her assessment of Kavanaugh were “reading too much into this specific decision.”

Right. Because otherwise, you might conclude that once again our senator had been, you know, bamboozled.

Of course it may be that progressive and moderate Mainers have been expecting too much of Senator Collins all along; she is a Republican, after all, and that she should vote with her party should, perhaps, surprise no one. Still, Maine’s politicians have a tradition of fierceness and independence, from Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain to James G. Blaine, from Olympia Snowe to William Cohen (all four of them Republicans, in fact). On June 1, Mainers observed the 70th anniversary of Margaret Chase Smith’s “Statement of Conscience” speech, in which she unequivocally denounced Joseph McCarthy.

For the longest time Senator Collins was clearly in that tradition; in 2014, this light-blue state re-elected her with 68 percent of the vote.

But it may be that the independence for which Ms. Collins was once celebrated is itself a thing of the past. “We’re in the era of Mitch McConnell, and he’s not interested in compromise,” Susan Young, the editorial page editor of The Bangor Daily News, has explained. “We’re criticizing her for not doing something that just isn’t happening in the Senate anymore.”

But that doesn’t mean that Mainers aren’t still yearning for it. Mainers expected Senator Collins to stand up to Mr. Trump, to show courage and conscience. Instead, she enabled him, leaving this country divided and adrift.

How do we feel? Disappointed.

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