Hmm. It appears that Sen. Collins has folded like a folding chair on Wall Street reform.
Think this had anything to do with it?
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The fun starts at 2:02. The look on the face of Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) is, at times, priceless.
(As with the Andrea Mitchell shellacking, no tweets from the Collins camp about this TV appearance.)
For the record, I don't think Sen. Collins is schizophrenic. I just think she's a hypocrite.
UPDATE: The junior senator will, of course, want credit here for being a moderate bipartisan centrist filibuster maverick. Or something.
And stenographers in the Maine media will probably give it to her. (If they even notice.)
But caving into the clear will of the people, in the face of public humiliation, doesn't exactly make you a non-ideological team player.
This isn't about moderation. It's about facing reality.
2 comments:
Senator Collins is also a golden girl...a Goldman Sachs Senator that is. The 10th largest source of Senator Collins’ donations in her last campaign came from…Goldman Sachs’ sources and connections to the tune of just shy of $24,000.
From a DagBlog commentator regarding our mythical moderates:
There are no moderate Republicans in the Senate any more. There are Republican Senators who were once moderates. There are Republican Senators who might depend upon moderate voters in, say, Maine. There are even Republican Senators who might vote moderately if they weren't actually, you know, in the Senate. But it in the actual world, every Republican Senator votes the same way, which means that they are all indistinguishable from Sam Brownback.
When the votes actually matter, Olympia Snowe votes like a hard-line conservative. So does Susan Collins. They're only moderates when nothing real is at stake. If you talk like a moderate but vote like a conservative, that means you actually are a conservative in the only way that matters. Because the votes get counted.
Believing in the mythical "moderate Senate Republicans" requires that the "moderates" not be held accountable for how they actually vote. They are allowed to obstruct legislation through relentless parliamentary maneuvers while complaining that the majority isn't "collegial" enough.
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