Thursday brought a mix of favorable and troubling news for the Senate’s most vulnerable Republican.
The first piece of good news for Susan Collins arrived when Governor Janet Mills announced she would withdraw from Maine’s Democratic Senate primary.
Rather than facing a “safe” moderate who has already won statewide office, Collins will now face an autumn campaign against a far-left unknown carrying a trunkful of political baggage. Some of it relates to Nazism.
That could theoretically make her reelection path easier. As I noted yesterday, I’m not convinced Mills is more electable than Graham “
The other half of the news arrived when she was compelled to vote on the latest resolution from Senate Democrats aimed at ending the war with Iran. This was the sixth such bill brought to the floor since February 28; despite widespread public opposition to the conflict, she had remained with her party and voted against the previous five.
But this time she cast a yes vote. Was it the war’s grim polling numbers that finally pushed her to change? Or pressure from her new presumed opponent Platner, a vehemently anti-war former Marine? Neither, Collins says.
It was simply timing. “As I have maintained since hostilities with Iran began, the president’s authority as commander-in-chief is not without limits,” she stated. “The Constitution assigns Congress a crucial role in decisions of war and peace, and the War Powers Act creates a definite 60-day window for Congress to authorize or terminate U.S. involvement in foreign hostilities. That deadline isn’t optional; it is a requirement.”
Today marks sixty days since hostilities between the United States and Iran began. Congress has taken no formal steps in that period to authorize the war. That, according to Collins, means the president’s time is up. She believes she is duty-bound to call off the conflict.
The White House offered a response that some would call clever, though it’s hardly a hallmark of cunning for this administration. Because a ceasefire is in effect, the 60-day clock has not run out. Hostilities ended when both sides stopped firing on April 7. That leaves the War Powers Act clock with 23 days still to run, or perhaps it has been reset altogether.
That argument is absurd. Yet Collins’ reading of the 60-day deadline, a view shared by many of her colleagues, is equally farcical. More absurd than either is the reality that, in the near future, even the modest symbolic steps aimed at constraining presidential warmaking powers may vanish entirely.
