The left is determined to oust Susan Collins
It’s no secret that the left wants to hold the House and take the Senate, so that even if Trump wins again they can thwart his every move in terms of legislation. And the Senate is particularly important, of course, for approving judicial nominees.
Therefore the left is determined to defeat Susan Collins of Maine. It’s especially ironic, because in past years it’s been the right wing of the GOP that has tried to oust Collins as insufficiently conservative and way too RINOesque.
But Collins turned out to be the unexpected hero (to the right) of the Kavanaugh confirmation, standing up for the rule of law against the politics of unsupported character destruction pushed by the left against Kavanaugh. In this, the left sees an opportunity to defeat her in the purplish-blueish state of Maine, where she was already something of an anomaly, although a longstanding one.
This Vox piece from yesterday pushes the completely discredited recent NY Times allegations as something that will hurt Collins, and knowing how propaganda works (it’s often effective, in other words) Vox may even be correct about that.
However:
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report recently moved its appraisal of Collins’s race from “lean Republican” to a toss-up, citing a number of polls showing Collins losing ground and the emergence of a strong Democratic challenger.
To be sure, what few polls there are show Collins leading her closest challenger — Democrat and Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon — by double digits. Collins has a huge advantage with her name recognition. But a number Republicans are worried about is Collins’ approval rating, which Morning Consult shows is at 45 percent, compared to 48 percent unfavorable. Another poll, conducted by AARP in July, shows Collins at 49 percent favorability, and 41 percent unfavorability.
It may be mere wishful thinking on the part of the left that Collins could lose her seat. But if she doesn’t lose it, it won’t be for lack of trying on the part of the left to defeat her.
The fact that all the Kavanaugh charges are bogus and have been proven so, and that the latest charges are especially weak, doesn’t matter. Think they don’t work as propaganda? Think again:
“There was a lot of grassroots energy that came out of [the Kavanaugh vote],” Stack [Maine Democratic Party spokesperson] told Vox this summer. “People keep wanting to step up for us. That energy has not dissipated, it’s only grown.”
Big lies get stronger the more they are repeated. You can fool some of the people some of the time. The real question is: how many? and for how long?
I have decided to concentrate all my political donations to the Senate because, even if (shudder) the President loses, the Senate may be able to hold back the worst depredations of the Left. That means that I am donating to people who I would ordinarily not support: Collins, McSally, and Cory Gardner.
One problem with this strategy is that these are the RINOs that are the most likely to fold when the going gets rough. After all, Collins is a hero because she had the backbone to vote for Kav unlike her weak sister Murk. But you pays your money and you take your chances.
p.s. I am donating to some specific high payoff cases like some of the House seats that were stolen by the Dems ballot harvesting operation here in Calizuela. I am praying the the CAGOP wakes up and hires some of their own harvesting troops.
I’m a Mainer, and all of this talk about Collins being in trouble is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of her leftist adversaries. The latest Kavanaugh brouhaha, rather than denigrate her further, will actually help her, reinforcing her statement in support of the associate justice, putting due process, innocent-until-proven guilty, and the rule of law above totally uncorroborated allegations and partisan politics.
When will it be clear that most Dems are determined to oust EVERY Republican, from elected offices and from media and from academia? From polite society.
They believe, and act on the belief, that Reps are evil, Evil, EVIL. So they tell themselves about each Rep that gets in the news.
This will be the story in every Senate race — the Dems already “know” that the Reps are evil, so it’s a matter of “educating” the terrible Trump-supporters.
They know Kavanaugh is terrible, even if the actual accusations made are not factual, the “Greater Truth” is that, because he’s a Rep, he’s guilty of being bad.
It’s Democrat Derangement Syndrome – not Bush DS, Trump DS, Kavanaugh DS, nor Collins Derangement Syndrome, but Dem DS.
Expect more false (evidence-free) accusations against Collins to be surfacing. And against all Reps. Plus maybe even some true accusations — many Reps are likely guilty of many small crimes; things the media wouldn’t and won’t mention if Dems did them.
I hope and pray that more rational voters who previously supported Dems wake up to the lies. But really don’t know.
Lincoln’s actual quote was, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
Those people you can fool all of the time? That’s the Democrat LIV voting base.
Sen. Collins could easily lose her seat. Maine is a weird place that appears to be going further left. The last time I was there, I saw quite a few bumper stickers that said, “Goodbye Susan”.
Her speech, announcing the reasons for her vote, was quite good. She didn’t just stand up for justice: she stood up for fairness. The Left has essentially abandoned fairness. That’s sad. Kindness and fairness are the foundations of morality. They aren’t just universal human values; they’re common to many social primates. Politics makes people stupid and mean.
From Collins speech:
“We have seen special interest groups whip their followers into a frenzy by spreading misrepresentations and outright falsehoods about Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record. Over-the-top rhetoric and distortions of his record and testimony at his first hearing produced short-lived headlines, which although debunked hours later, continued to live on and be spread through social media.”
“This debate is complicated further by the fact that the Senate confirmation process is not a trial. But certain fundamentally legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence, and fairness do bear on my thinking, and I cannot abandon them. In evaluating any given claim of misconduct we will be ill served in the long republic if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness tempting though it may be. We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy. The presumption of innocence is relevant to the advice and consent function when an accusation departs from a nominees otherwise exemplary record. I worry that departing from this presumption could a lead to a lack of public faith in the judiciary and would be hugely damaging to the confirmation process moving forward.”
“It is not merely a case of differing groups having different opinions. It is a case of people bearing extreme ill will toward those who disagree with them. In our intense focus on our differences, we have forgotten the common values that bind us together as Americans.”
She’s leading by double digits and it’s a tossup ?
Somebody either :
A. doesn’t know how democracy works, or
B. doesn’t know how arithmetic works.
I do not like Collins but I hope she wins.
That said, it is clear that Neo-land aka New England will continue its mad (insane) and maddening Left shift.
As I’ve posted before but misspelled his name at least once by keystroke error, the now-octogenarian philosopher-historian John Lukacs, in his last book entitled “Last Rites”, is emphatic the American century ended in 1989 and that the ‘old’ America is gone forever. Never to be resurrected. Never.
Its decline of course dates to the 1960s, when The Graduate, played by Dustin Hoffman, was indecisive but shrugged off the advice to go into ‘plastics’ and fell into Mrs. Robinson’s clutches instead.
But hopefully we will not descend to the level of a Venezuela or a Cuba or a Russia as the Democratic candidates seem to favor. I would accept decay into a Germany though I surely do not now wish to live in Merkel’s land or the EU; it will just be the best of the worst in future.
All great civilizations have died from within, without being conquered by externals, and so it is with us.
Don’t have to like Collins, but she’s a true hero.
While we’re at it, I feel the same way about Kevin D. Williamson. (No, one doesn’t have to agree with everything he writes; yes, he sometimes is mistaken. As far as I’m concernmed, he generally makes up for it with mostly well-reasoned, well-crafted columns…and has an incredible sense of humor…)
One’s mileage may, of course, vary.
File under: “Leave ideological purity to the fanatics on the left side of the aisle.”
Here in Maine they’ve already been running TV ads against Susan Collins for the last few weeks, all with the theme that she voted for big tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, and that she doesn’t care about everyone else.
The other recent pernicious innovation in Maine politics, ranked-choice voting, is about to take place for ALL elections, including that for the President, in 2020. (And note that Donald Trump received one electoral vote from Maine in 2016.) I am disgusted by this new system, as it effectively gives certain people two votes.
Yankee:
Ranked choice for presidential elections make no sense in a 2-party system. But when I contemplate what will actually happen, what it does is to elevate 3rd party candidates and yes, in effect to give people who support them two votes.
At least, that’s my impression of what the effect would be. Is that correct? Does it work that way?
The new system in Maine is similar to what is done in Australia, where if no candidate receives a 50%-plus majority, then ranked-choices are counted until one person has a majority (the people who voted first for him, plus the people who voted for him as their second choice, and so on).
This came about due to some referendum, motivated by anger and hatred toward Governor Paul LePage, who won twice, in 2010 and 2014, both times with around a 40% plurality of the vote, since the Democrats and the Independent candidate split the rest.
In 2018, Congressman Bruce Poliquin in Maine’s 2nd district had a few thousand more votes than challenger Jared Golden. But neither had a 50%-plus majority, so the ranked-choice votes were counted, and Jared Golden was declared the winner, as he had enough second-choice votes from people who voted for the three or four other independent candidates (all leftist types).
That makes it safe to vote for an independent, as one’s vote will end up being counted for the mainstream party of one’s choice, if the election is really close. But if there are no other conservative or right-leaning candidates to vote for except for the Republican nominee, then the odds of winning shift to favor the Democrat nominee, as he is guaranteed to pick up more votes, as their second choice.
After all, if not someone like Bruce Poliquin, then there is no second choice for a conservative voter. He is the first and only choice. There is no point in such a voter even making ranked choices. But in a state like Maine at this time, a liberal voter can make several choices when voting, knowing that ultimately his vote will count toward whatever liberal candidate ends up winning.
I read the Vox piece – it’s always good to know what the left side of the country is learning (if that’s the right word; cue Reagan about “what they know that isn’t so”).
Democrat Sara Gideon complains about Collins’ waffling between right and left, just like we do!
Here’s her record relative to Trump’s position.
It’s all over the map, of course.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/susan-m-collins/
Click on the top of a column to sort. I sorted by “agreement with Trump” and there was a stark, and unmixed, division between R and D senators.
For reference, no Democrat agreed with the President more than 54.8% of the time (some of those in Red states, of course, who have to pretend to be centrist, but not all of them); and no Republican agreed with him less than 67.9% — that was Collins.
Here’s a website that tracks positions and votes on particular issues, but you have to know the organizations doing the ratings to make sense of it.
Collins is very mixed; look at a solid Republican for comparison.
https://votesmart.org/candidate/evaluations/379/susan-collins/2#.XYLXfChKhPY
In re Vox as a trustworthy (ahem) news site, I think someone else linked the first Mollie Hemingway post elsewhere, but both of them are good on the context for reading Vox. Bonus link to her husband Mark’s post at Washington Examiner the same month.
https://thefederalist.com/2014/07/09/media-ignorance-becoming-serious-problem/
https://thefederalist.com/2014/07/17/voxs-motto-should-be-explaining-the-news-incorrectly-repeatedly/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-death-of-explanatory-journalism
Calizuela – h/t Bob.
I haven’t seen that before, but it seems to have been a “big thing” in 2018.
San Francisco seems to be running for capital of the new state.
A reminder from VDH of the kind of people the Left wants to replace Collins with, although they are actually running against Trump at the moment.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/democratic-party-debate-cowardice-hypocrisy-nuttiness/
RTWT, but this is the final graf:
Get rid of Susan Collins and elect Paul LePage. 🙂