Maine Sen. Susan Collins has thus far been the only Senate Republican to break with her leader Mitch McConnell's blockade of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee and call for actual hearings for Merrick Garland. She says McConnell is "not real happy" with her over her apostasy, but she won't be quiet about it.

The Maine moderate has already said that there should be public hearings for the nominee, but on Tuesday she upped her criticisms of GOP leadership's position that the next president should choose the successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "That's a sincere belief, but it's not one that I hold," she said on Maine's Newsradio WGAN, as flagged by ThinkProgress. "The President, whether Republicans like him or not, is our President until next January, until Inauguration Day and it just seemed to me that there was no basis for saying that no matter who the President nominates, we were not going to consider that individual." […] She also noted that Garland, a moderate who has won praise from politicians across the spectrum, was likely a better deal for Republicans than the hypothetical nominee a President Hillary Clinton would put forward, or even the nominee of a Republican President Donald Trump. She said she was "perplexed" by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) calculus.

Meanwhile, everyone else is wondering why in the hell Collins is still a Republican. Will she remain one with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket this cycle? Or is she avoiding that question since she's not on the ballot herself this year? She must be getting awfully sick of being the Republican all the others reference to say that the party still has a place for moderates, and being the emblem of their so-called big tent. That's a thankless job.