Really, Susan Collins? Really?

In a story on Susan Collins’ tough reelection campaign, The Los Angeles Times grabbed one of the most obtuse quotes I’ve ever seen from a politician. This is like J.C. Penney wondering why there’s been such a precipitous drop in sales of Cosby sweaters.

“Wherever we have been in the state, people will come up to us and say, what do you think happened to Susan Collins?” statehouse speaker Sara Gideon, the Democratic front-runner in the Senate race, told a crowd of about 100 people gathered Saturday night over Maine staples of baked beans and bright red hot dogs. “We really hear that question posed in that way all of the time. It feels like she is making decisions that are in somebody else’s interest, not in ours.”

Collins — one of the few remaining senators on either side of the aisle willing to buck their party on key votes — objects to the idea that she has changed.

“I don’t even understand that argument. I am doing exactly the same thing I’ve always done. I’ve always cast votes with an eye to how they affect the state of Maine and our country,” Collins said in an interview outside in below-freezing temperatures after counting down the start clock for one of the sled dog contestants, called mushers. “I think Mainers will look at my record, remember who I am and where I’m from.”