Kerr: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is part of a dying breed — the fearless politician

I took a big gamble voting for Susan Collins in 2020.

I was fed up with the political gamesmanship of Mitch McConnell and the GOP’s Senate majority, best exemplified by their boycotting of an election-year Supreme Court nomination in 2016, only to rush through their own pick four years later. And if the White House was going to be occupied by a Democrat, I wasn’t keen on a Republican leadership whose sole apparent purpose was making sure nothing gets done.

So, I was pretty burnt out on seeing Republicans in charge of the United States Senate. But it also didn’t seem right to punish Collins for the acts of her craven, bumbling colleagues. She’d served Maine with honor, integrity and her trademark independence for 24 years at the time, and it seemed to me she deserved to be supported in kind.

Some of my liberal friends and acquaintances couldn’t understand this logic. A vote for Collins was a vote for the weaselly McConnell, they argued. Collins was considered pretty vulnerable in 2020; winning her seat — and with it the Senate’s majority — was one of the Democrats’ highest priorities.

Of course, we all know how the campaign turned out. Collins trailed Democratic opponent Sara Gideon, Maine’s speaker of the House, in pretty much every poll right up to the election, and then won her fifth term by almost 9 percentage points. And thanks to something of a political miracle, Democrats actually won two Senate seats in Georgia, so the GOP still lost its majority.

My conscience was clear.

I’m not going to say I always agree with the lady from Caribou, but I can tell you she continues to make me proud of my vote. In fact, while those around her in Washington continue to diminish themselves with buffoonery and cowardice, Collins’ stature only seems to rise.

I was particularly proud last week when she stepped forward as the first Republican senator to announce her support for Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. This was a pretty gutsy decision — for all she knew, she could have been the lone Republican brave enough to put herself out there. As it is, she was joined by Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney a few days later.

This isn’t the first time Collins has stepped into the breach. While the late great John McCain’s famous “thumbs down” vote in 2017 saved Obamacare for millions of Americans, it was Collins and Murkowski who set up the tie that made McCain the dramatic deciding vote. Collins has demonstrated her independence through such actions time and again.

But I was especially appreciative of her support for Brown after witnessing the absolute clownishness of her fellow Republicans during that process.

When discussing politicians whose reputation has taken a nosedive in recent years, Lindsey Graham stands at the very top. Or more accurately, at the bottom. There was a moment when Graham was my favorite among the roughly 547 contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He seemed pretty smart, he was funny and self-deprecating, I liked his thoughts on defense, and he was a good friend of McCain’s, so that in itself indicated he must be a man of character.

I wish I knew whatever happened to that guy, because the Lindsey Graham I saw at Jackson’s confirmation hearings was a petulant, unhinged imposter. He used his time to whine to her about a potential candidate from his state who did not get nominated to the Court, and then he whined some more about the hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh — both points entirely unrelated to Jackson’s qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court.

He repeatedly interrupted Jackson when she tried to answer his questions, to the point where Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin essentially had to tell him to shut up and let her answer. Graham eventually fell apart on live TV, grabbed his bottle of soda pop and left the room in a huff.

When he finally announced he would not support Jackson’s nomination, Graham declared: "Her record is overwhelming in its lack of a steady judicial philosophy and a tendency to achieve outcomes in spite of what the law requires or common sense would dictate."

Now, less than a year ago Graham voted in favor of Jackson’s appointment to what is considered the second-highest court in the land, the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Why the everlovin’ hell would a United States senator, who happens to be a lawyer himself, approve the appointment of a federal judge with such deep flaws to the Court of Appeals?

Not that he was the only clown in this circus. I know verbal targets don’t come much easier than Ted Cruz, but it was telling when even his former Harvard Law professor and O.J. Simpson attorney Alan Dershowitz — not exactly a champion of liberal causes — described Ted’s questioning of Jackson as “absurd.”

And Tom Cotton — who I once thought could be a national leader, but now sounds dumber every time I hear him — claimed Jackson would have defended Nazis during the Nuremburg trials. He was referencing the fact Jackson was assigned to represent terrorists as a public defender, and counting on people being too stupid to understand public defenders are tasked with representing those who can’t afford a legal defense. I mean, that’s literally their job.

Make no mistake, this was all political posturing, transparent and cynical.

As someone who originally hails from Kentucky, I’ve always thought Collins had the demure gentility of those great Southern ladies of old. She speaks in a soft voice and is always well-mannered. She’s also twice as tough as any of her counterparts in the Senate. Don’t forget, this is the daughter of a guy who fought in the infantry in World War II, and was twice wounded in action at the Battle of the Bulge.

When told a particularly radical fringe member of her own party had viciously attacked her vote, Collins just laughed.

"Frankly, this is what we've come to expect from her," she replied. “It's obviously ludicrous and typical."

And that pretty much said it all. Unlike most of her Washington Republican colleagues, Collins is not afraid to color outside the lines. I expect we’ll see further evidence in the months ahead.

D. Allan Kerr is an ex-dockworker, former newspaperman and U.S. Navy veteran living in Kittery, Maine.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kerr: Susan Collins is part of a dying breed — the fearless politician