A comment on Wonkette’s Susan Collins article:

Look. Susan Collins is a monster. She’s going to vote like a monster, because she is a monster. And she friggin’ doesn’t care.

Like Lindsey Graham, whatever enjoyable speculations people may indulge, she’s probably not being blackmailed into jumping on board this national express excursion flight into raw fascism: like Lindsey, she signed up, she’s an eager volunteer.

The Republican Party has been trending toward fascism since at least the 1970s and the infamous Powell Memorandum which provides the blueprint for literally everything that has happened since: and really since the 1950s, when what was then a fringe element of the Party (the John Birch types, seedbed for the Koch brothers, once a minority, now the whole ugly ball of Republican wax, which is like ear-wax, only worse) freaked out about the rise of liability laws, the popularity of Social Security, the regulatory tendencies of the post-war state, and the civil rights movement, and began to organize in earnest.

This is who these people are. They’re anti-democracy. They’re natural fascists. They believe in Master Race theory. They want to smash democracy because they think it’s bad and unfair to the rich. They want to erode voting rights until only Republicans are allowed to vote, because otherwise people will just vote for their own self-interest (Republicans have no sense of irony about this, none at all).

They believe rich people are rich because they’re better than other people: and that white people are white because they’re better than other people: and that strong men can’t be expected not to engage in acts of sexual aggression against women who are careless enough to go out in public without a duenna.

They believe the safety net is bad because it’s like feeding raccoons, you just get a bunch of lazy raccoons (this is practically a direct quote from numerous Republican politicians), so no more Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, VA benefits, jobless benefits, SNAP, CHIP, or public education. Privatize it all. Voucherize it. Break it. Smash it down to its original atoms. As long as there’s even one single billionaire out there weeping because he can’t siphon a few more dollars worth of public treasure into his private offshore accounts, it’s a friggin’ human tragedy.

And machine guns for everyone, because freedom: and no abortions or contraception, because Freedom Jesus.

Susan Collins is voting to place Brett Kavanaugh on the bench so that he, along with Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, can accelerate this shit. Not despite the fact that he will do this, but because he will do this. This is what Susan Collins believes in.

wonkette.com