Our coming November elections will determine, who will be our next President, but, too, who will serve as Senate Majority Leader? That latter determination is as consequential to the future of our nation as who resides in the White House come 2021.
Whoever is Majority Leader will dictate, in large part, the emerging complexion of our nation’s judiciary for the foreseeable future.
For years Mitch McConnell has been intent on installing a solid phalanx of judges who will implement his version of a conservative judicial agenda throughout our federal courts up to the Supreme Court bench.
Certainly, Sen. Collins’ record of votes on federal judicial appointments has been to McConnell’s liking and his conservative agenda. The highest-profile of these were her votes to confirm Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Without her support, now Justice Kavanaugh would likely still be sitting on a lower court bench in DC.
Less visible, but no less important, our Senior Senator has also voted to confirm the likes of L. Steven Grasz, whom the American Bar Association unanimously certified as unqualified for a seat on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Such questionable votes are peppered throughout her decisions on federal judges, decisions that now exceed a hundred and counting.
Reasonably, Sen. Collins can be seen as an active co-conspirator with the current Majority Leader in transforming our federal courts into a system compliant with this one Kentucky Senator’s peculiar vision of America.
So, with a wisp of sadness, I say, it is time for Collins’s to become one of those four “flipped seats” that will hand Chuck Schumer the title of Senate Majority Leader with which he and the Senate can stand against McConnell’s conservative dreamscape of how best to “Make American Great Again.”
Bill Foster,
Phippsburg
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