Sen. Collins should be praised for her newfound willingness to buck the GOP consensus. But this seems weird and pernicious:
Collins, who wrote the transportation bill with subcommittee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said she had gotten commitments from several Republicans that they would vote for cloture. But when it became obvious the bill would not meet the 60-vote threshold, she told them they should vote no.
The idea seems to be that like-minded "moderate" GOP colleagues should save their GOP-snubbing defections for a bill that actually has a chance of passing.
But that calculation depends on assuming each senator has a finite supply of party-challenging votes at her disposal, to be carefully parceled out--and that it's unrealistic to ask Senate colleagues simply to vote the merits.
Isn't that exactly the blinkered, partisan mindset that Collins is supposed to have been spending the last 17 (!) years working to defeat?
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