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Collins and Flake’s grandstanding on the Kavanaugh nomination is just the latest example of their hypocrisy. Yet they have somehow come to be adored by the U.S. media in recent years. They put out moderate-sounding statements and give numerous interviews in which they appear pained or torn, and what do the members of the Washington press corps do? They lap it up. U.S. political journalism still centers on the horse race narrative — who is up and who is down, and which politician has switched from this camp to that camp. Flake and Collins have sucked up media oxygen over the past two years, and dominated both newspaper headlines and cable news chyrons over the past two weeks by raising the hopes of naive liberals who so desperately want to believe that there might be a few decent human beings left inside the Republican Party. They have made alliances and friendships with Democrats across the aisle (hello, Chris Coons!) who are obsessed with fetishizing comity and bipartisanship. The media, and some Democrats, might have been kind to Flake and Collins — but history won’t be. In decades to come, people will look back and wonder why, with the single exception of the Collins vote to save Obamacare in 2017, neither senator used their considerable power or influence to derail Trump’s toxic and reactionary agenda. In a Senate split so narrowly along partisan lines, 51 to 49, these two senators could have united not just to block Kavanaugh — a nominee accused of sexual misconduct by three women and opposed by former Republican Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, among others — but to hold a lawless president to account. Talk is cheap. As the Washington Post’s “Never Trump” conservative blogger, Jennifer Rubin, pointed out a year ago, senators like Flake and Collins “can demand hearings on Trump’s conflicts of interest, potential violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, self-enrichment and nepotism. They can even demand a vote on legislation to require the president to release his tax returns. Remember: They hold the cards in the Senate.” What cards, though? Which votes? Collins and Flake have proved, time and again, to be shameless cowards who talk a good game but much prefer words to action. They’re also diehard conservatives: Trump’s agenda, more often than not, is their agenda. So, yes, they express concern and regret, they call for compromise and bipartisanship, they sigh and frown. And then? Then, they vote with the president. On his cabinet nominees. On tax cuts. On Neil Gorsuch. And, yes, on Kavanaugh too.