That grinding sound you hear is caused by Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ political gears gradually shifting her to the right. Collins has activated the ponderous position-changing machinery because there’s no longer any reason for her to pretend to be a centrist.

There’ll be those who’ll claim the senator’s new-found attitude is meant to accommodate her party’s conservative shift. These respected experts will insist that to accomplish anything in a Washington dominated by Neanderthals, Collins must turn a blind eye to racism, sexual harassment, human-caused climate change and the president’s utter inability to interact with the truth.

These political knowers don’t know doodly.

Even with the GOP gains in the Senate in the November election, the divide is still too narrow to allow the party the luxury of ostracizing any of its members, just because a couple of them might believe in evolution, a woman’s right to control her own body or that the earth isn’t flat. Collins has no need to alter her ideology to curry favor with a caucus that can ill afford to alienate her.

The real reason Maine’s senior senator has decided to purge herself of any whiff of liberalism is she no longer has any use for liberals. The local leftists have made it clear they hate her, and she’s now free to admit she’s never much cared for them.

This refreshing dose of honesty began with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process. Democrats and allied progressives insisted that if Collins didn’t oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, they would support somebody – anybody – who ran against her in 2020. They backed up their pledge by raising more than $4 million through crowdfunding for the campaign of this yet-to-be-discovered opponent.

Collins called that a bribe and an attempt to blackmail her. Neither of those descriptions seems accurate, since the money wasn’t offered to her (which is a key factor in bribery), and there was no request that she pay anything to anyone (without which there isn’t much in the way of blackmail). The whole escapade was merely another way for her constituents to attempt to influence her position on a matter of public concern — something fairly central to the concept of representative government.

It’s also difficult to figure why Collins would object to big money being raised for a political campaign, since the Republican Party has long advocated for the unfettered use of bucket loads of cash to influence elections. If anybody should have been condemning this fundraising effort, it’s the liberals who are conducting it.

Setting hypocrisy aside, Collins took some nasty shots from protesters, particularly after she voted to confirm Kavanaugh. She, her husband and her staff received threatening letters and emails. Her Wikipedia page was hacked. An actor from Texas called for a boycott of Maine. In an interview with the Portland Press Herald, a lawyer from Massachusetts accused Collins of “intellectual and moral dishonesty.” Small wonder that during a Congressional speech, Collins called the attacks a “caricature of a gutter-level political campaign.”

The vehemence with which the anti-Collins activists expressed their dismay may have been over the top, but it also appears to have been effective in swaying certain segments of public opinion. A Morning Consult poll taken after her Kavanaugh vote showed a huge drop in her approval rating among Democrats when compared to previous surveys. A Critical Insights poll found an 11 percent loss of support among women. But both surveys indicated Collins had regained a lot of ground with the GOP. If she runs for re-election in 2020 (far from a sure thing), her base is now more secure, and the chances she’ll face a serious challenge from a right-winger in the Republican primary is diminished.

As the slowly grinding gears indicate, Collins’ conversion to conservatism is a gradual process. When a memo surfaced suggesting a nominee for a federal judgeship had been involved in attempts to deny black people voting rights, Collins didn’t immediately rescind her support. She just told reporters it required “further research.” When acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whittaker was exposed as an advocate for limiting or firing special counsel Robert Mueller, she slid around it by telling the press it was a “great cause for concern.”

Nobody is going to mistake her for Mississippi’s GOP U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, she of the racially charged remarks and whites-only education. A PAC affiliated with Collins may have contributed to Hyde-Smith’s campaign, but that doesn’t make them ideologically identical.

Yet.

Grind me up and spit me out by emailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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