Maine Republican Party Rejects Censure of Sen. Susan Collins for Vote to Impeach Trump

The Maine Republican Party voted Saturday against censure of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) for her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump.

Following the 41-19 vote, Fox News reported Collins said, “Today’s decision is a testament to the Republican Party’s ‘big tent’ philosophy that respects different views but unites around core principles.”

Collins added:

Our party has been most successful when it has embraced this approach to advance our shared goals of providing tax relief to families and small business job creators, pursuing fiscal responsibility and government accountability, promoting personal responsibility, protecting constitutional rights, and ensuring a strong national defense.

Nevertheless, Maine’s Aroostook County Republicans handed Collins a censure vote for her decision to vote to impeach Trump.

Signed by 19 members of the Republican Party from Collins’ home county,  the censure resolution can be viewed at Bangor Daily News, and states:

Senator Collins public statements in support of the language, actions and promotion of an illegal, unethical, unconstitutional ‘impeachment’ of former President Donald J. Trump, undermines the conservative and ethical values promoted by the Aroostook County Republicans and the Maine Republican Party and as demonstrated, is a purely self-serving, vindictive and punitive action by those with establishment political objectives.

According to a press release from the Aroostook County GOP:

Collins faced down the backlash among Maine Republicans over her yes vote by saying the evidence was “very strong” that Trump incited an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The Maine Republican Party issued a letter to Collins a month later condemning her vote “in the strongest possible terms,” but it came only in the wake of widespread demands by Maine Republicans for the state party to take action.

“We want to hold them accountable,” said Aroostook County Committee Chair John DeVeau, referring to the Maine Republican Party. “Nobody has taken any actions to hold (Collins) accountable for her decision, and many of us in the party feel like we’re being disenfranchised. Some are even talking about leaving.”

Collins on Thursday defended her vote to convict Trump as “impartial justice.”

“My vote was based on my duty to uphold the Constitution and to render impartial justice, rather than on partisan political considerations,” she said, as reported the Associated Press. “I have cast three votes on presidential impeachments; each time I voted based on the Constitution, the evidence, and my conscience – not my party affiliation.”

Collins made headlines this week when she and other Republican lawmakers visited the country’s southern border. The Maine senator declared the border situation a “crisis,” stating she could “hear the cartel members taunting” them across the river.

Drug, currency, and weapons seizures by Customs and Border Patrol have skyrocketed along the U.S.-Mexico border. As one agent remarked, “And these are just what we caught.” pic.twitter.com/ta6rKAniG1

— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) March 27, 2021

However, as Breitbart News reported in September 2019, Collins was one of 11 Republican senators who voted against funding Trump’s border wall and in support of cancelling the former president’s declaration of a national border emergency.

Collins said the vote was about whether “the Congress of the United States of America should yield its constitutionally prescribed power of the purse to the President.”

“The answer to that question, regardless of who is in the White House … should be no,” she added. “Congress alone is empowered by the constitution to adopt laws directing money from the U.S. Treasury.”