1. After 23yrs in Senate, think we can assume @SenatorCollins NOT getting powerful committee positions wasn’t a matter of her being overlooked by leadership, but rather was *key to her political strategy.*
#mepolitics https://twitter.com/collinswatch/status/1262547931124596742

2. Since 2015 @SenatorCollins has only chaired the Special Committee on Aging, which *has no legislative authority* for oversight or appropriations, but gives her ample opportunity for generating headlines about how she’s working to protect seniors.

3. Who can argue politically against protecting seniors? Especially in the nation’s oldest state, when your party is completely dependent on the senior vote?

@SenatorCollins gets all the glowing headlines, while avoiding any direct responsibility for the programs seniors need.

4. Other than Aging, Collins’ only other committee chairmanship was at Homeland Sec and Govt Affairs, a bland committee choice clearly intended to burnish her bipartisan cred.

She was preceded and succeeded on that committee by none other than Joe Lieberman, for god’s sake!

5. Collins is happy to be Chair of an Approp subcommittee, where she gets to quietly steer DOT funding to Maine, but I doubt she actually wants the responsibility of chairing the whole Approp Comm.

In any case, I’m sure she and Mitch have a plan all worked out. #mepolitics

6. What’s enraging about @SenatorCollins’ strategic avoidance of power is that she actually holds TREMENDOUS power, but refuses to use it.

She sits on the Health Committee and chairs the Aging Comm. Where the hell is her righteous anger about mass death of seniors from COVID?

7. Can you imagine what would happen if @SenatorCollins publicly & forcefully challenged the Trump admin on COVID? It would likely trigger an immediate shift in narrative in the political press that wld be extremely damaging to Trump & provide cover for other R’s to do the same.

8. But Trump and Mitch want @SenatorCollins to keep smiling, so that’s what she’ll do. /end