496
Susan Collins hands Trump the 50th vote against free and fair elections
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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
496 points (98.6% liked)
politics
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Maine lugging around a record number of "Fell For It Again" awards with that POS senator.
But better still is anyone who believed the "You need 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate" line we've been swallowing since Clinton.
I'm not American so I'm probably missing something, but isn't this a Republican who votes almost exclusively along party lines? So, a case of people getting exactly what they voted for?
I'm not saying she's not a despicable arsehole, but it doesn't seem like she hides it.
She's one of a few the Republicans have had strategically vote against the party when her vote wasn't needed to pass a bill. Basically her, Murkowski, and for a while McCain, until he really bucked the party with the ACA vote and became a pariah until his death.
The strategy being "pretend you're not an evil fuckface to get more votes", presumably?
Yes, in competitive states, they when by playing the reasonable centrist that swears they are willing to stand up to their party...
Never actually doing so when it could actually matter.
Partisanship is such a driving force in our politics that even someone who only bucks their party 4% of the time is considered "bipartisan". I've seen reports in the media calling a vote "bipartisan" if it only gets two or three votes from the other side.
And yes, it depends on that person's reputation. Since Collins is seen as a moderate, all it takes is her support on a bill to call it "bipartisan". OTOH, Senator Rand Paul frequently votes against the Republican party line, but only because he is a batshit crazy libertarian. He can vote against a Republican bill, and nobody calls that "bipartisan", I guess because both sides think he's nuts.
So the news here is "Rebellious Republican didn't rebel against Republican bill"?
Except "rebellious" means "still toes the line 96% of the time" and "Republican bill" means "whatever fucked up turd of an idea Trumps handlers have evacuated through that festering mouth-hole in his face"?
Yes, you understand that correctly. All I can say is that it wasn't always this way.
I'm well aware - I have a pretty comprehensive understanding of American political history, albeit entirely gleaned from Day of the Tentacle, The Wire, and that Obama "HOPE" poster.
Collins regularly advertises herself as a moderate and makes a big show of complaining about the rest of the party to the media.