Sometimes the gesture just isn’t worth it.
On Friday, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) announced that she would not vote for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but would instead enter former candidate Nikki Haley into the race, even though Haley has dropped out of the race and encouraged her delegates to support Trump. This is a futile and stupid gestureNothing but.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) plans to cast a mail-in ballot for the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to become the next president and will not vote for the former President Trump, Her office confirmed this on Friday.
Collins revealed her general election plans on Friday to a CBS and Fox photojournalist based in Portland, Maine.
Collins had previously indicated that she did not plan to vote for Trump in November, but her statement on Friday caused a stir again just days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
The senator from Maine supported Haley over Trump in the Republican primaries earlier this year. She also voted for Trump’s second impeachment.
Senator Collins should know better.
See also: Senate campaign for former Maryland governor Larry Hogan says he plans to avoid Republican National Convention
Senator Susan Collins is working difficult to draft gun control legislation for the troops
Symbolic votes are all well and good, and it’s unlikely that their vote will make much of a difference in Maine. The last time Maine gave its Electoral College votes to a Republican was in 1988, when the state’s voters chose George HW Bush. But it still doesn’t make sense, tactically or strategically. For example, the next president will likely have to make one, two, or even three Supreme Court appointments. If that’s Donald Trump, we’ll have some reasonable nominees. If President Kamala Harris – or President Gavin Newsom – is in office, those appointments will look very, very different.
In politics, you have to think not only tactically, but strategically. Sometimes the party has to trump the person (haha), and this 2024 election is one of those cases. There’s more at stake than the presidential election; control of the House and Senate will largely determine the agenda, as it involves committee chairs, who holds the speaker’s gavel, who is the Senate majority leader, and so on. These things are critical, and we need all of them if a conservative agenda is to have a chance of being realized.
Granted, Susan Collins is the kind of Republican who can win a statewide election in a state like Maine, where Joe Biden won with 53 percent of the vote in 2020, the last time Collins was re-elected. But that doesn’t make this action — and her public explanation for it — any less petulant or childish.
Note: The above admonitions are for Republicans. To any Democrats reading this, I urge you to consider all third party alternatives. Make your protest vote known! Vote for Jill Stein or Cornel West – vote your heart!
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