(Editor’s Note: Danny Cannon is fluent in sarcasm.)
On Monday, the American electorate received critical information it had long been waiting for this election— at long last, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) told us who she would be voting for in November. Well, really, she just said who she wouldn’t be voting for, but at least now the country knows what’s been on the mind of the esteemed Senator from Maine.
Collins chose to publish her essay as an opinion piece in the Washington Post, the hometown paper of the people she best represents.
Her piece is full of thought-provoking points, such as the claim that Donald Trump’s comments about Judge Curiel somehow demonstrated “a profound lack of respect… for our constitutional separation of powers.” She spends a number of paragraphs explaining that, since Trump has failed to “focus on jobs and the economy, tone down his rhetoric, develop more thoughtful policies and, yes, apologize for his ill-tempered rants”, she will not be supporting him in November. Though she mentions in one sentence of the piece that she supports neither of the major-party nominees, it remains unclear which of the only two possible Presidents next year she would prefer. She closes with the timeless refrain of Republican anti-Trumpers, explaining that one does not have to blindly support whoever happens to be the party’s nominee — and with that, she cut off the only possible counter-argument to her otherwise flawless manifesto.
If you are somehow unaware of Senator Collins (as if anyone possibly could be!), she is the pro-abortion Republican co-sponsor of ENDA, a federal bill which aims to end “discrimination” by denying the religious freedom rights of people across the country. She has worked hard in the Senate to preserve federal funding for Planned Parenthood and was a key vote in killing the Senate’s attempt to ban abortion after 20 weeks, the point at which the unborn child is capable of feeling pain. As she explains in the final sentences of her piece, the thing she admires most about the Republican party is “the value it has always placed on the worth and dignity of the individual.”
Danny Cannon works for the American Principles Project.
