Their results are already smeared across history in blood for all to see. Seeing it is not enough for people to act rationally; they need better ideas of what is right, and that won't come from urging the likes of Collins to more consistently pursue their impulses.

Collins has been notorious for years for frequently being a single 'holdout' vote blocking her own party on behalf of Democrats. That included supporting Obamacare at a crucial point. You can read the Collins background here on the forum https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Her 'speech', dramatically delivered long after others knew what the vote was about and she continued hold out in the name of "consideration" and "deliberation", contained nothing that many had not recognized and already been saying for weeks. Yet she is suddenly regarded, dropping all context, as a Republican hero for not voting with the Democrats -- this time.

Crazy people wandering the streets have not been a factor in the past for Senators making speeches in Washington. All prominent politicians receive death threats from crazies. She should have had better sense than as a US Senator to be wandering deserted streets at night -- the way normal people have the sense to stay out of dangerous dark alleys regardless of who is at fault in an attack.

None of what she did makes her "courageous" and "very intelligent". If she didn't have such a bad reputation for undermining her own party and hadn't delayed to dramatically make herself the center of attention, her "speech" would not have become such a hullabaloo. It's like lavishing praise on your dog for not killing and eating the neighborhood cat. Anyone with any common sense (including the dog) would have done the same thing without the hand-wringing histrionics, delays, and threats of siding with the Democrat goons.

The Republicans didn't want Kavanaugh's philosophy discussed, whatever it is, because they can't and don't think in principles or want any philosophy discussed. They are afraid of trying to publicly defend their own positions on principles beyond mouthing slogans of vaguely being for the Constitution, without regard for what in principle that means.

Remember that they did the same with the latest Obama judge -- Roberts: In his hearings he had been coached to say as little as possible. The current strategy for all of them has been to avoid meaningful discussion to avoid controversy, and otherwise 'ram it through', while the other side tries to create controversy to derail it.

They make 'pragmatic' assumptions and don't know what they are getting, then are surprised, and the public is surprised, at how it turns out later in Supreme Court decisions compared with what we had been vaguely told to expect (again, like Roberts). The losers are the American people who are denied meaningful discussion with and about the judicial nominee in the hearings and in the media, along with the consequences for the Court. Pragmatism does not work.

But there's no evidence that Republicans wanted the circus with its irrational, anti-intellectual antics and mudslinging that the Democrats created in the hearings and in the news to be as disruptive as possible. For all the Republicans' flaws, including Collins', they at least for once stood up on behalf of civilization and meant it.

Once it happened, they did politically exploit and denounce those antics to try to make them backfire in the elections as they appealed to what is left of civilized premises of the public. That helped them keep the Senate -- getting a larger majority not so dependent on Collins' 'swing votes'. So we're back to the Democrats' radical left nihilism versus Republicans accepting and managing the decline with their Pragmatist 'me too but slower' as all that is left of civilization in politics. That distinction is also illustrated by Collins herself as all that is still available from the Maine electorate (and which can be expected to further decline in that state).