Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the maverick Republican who will cast the deciding vote in the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, has got the left unhinged.

For years, she's been the bane of Republicans because she's strongly pro-choice (or pro-abortion, depending on how you want it put) and she's also shown a willingness to support the detested Obamacare setup for health care.  She famously cast a vote to acquit Bill Clinton of impeachment charges back in 1999.  Sounds a bit soft and mushy, right?  'Cuz, hey, she's a woman?

Her Kavanaugh vote today says no.  For all her appearances of leftishness, she seems to have a thing against being pushed around, and her independent backbone is not confined to Republicans.  That comes as a shock to the left because she was, up until now, always "theirs," and pushing her around was the left's whole plan.  They used the foulest tactics, far worse than the media reported, according to Sen. Marco Rubio. And it all backfired, so they're seething yet, incredibly, not stopping.  With the witch hunt over, they are coming for the heretics.

In doing the same thing over and over again, they aren't going to get a different result. 

It was quite a sequence for them, though.  Leftists started early in the confirmation process, well before the Christine Blasey Ford accusations, zeroing in on Collins over most other Republicans, in the hopes of bludgeoning her into submission to their party line.

First, dangling offers of money:

A crowdfunding website is trying to strong-arm Senator Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine, by giving more than $1 million to her 2020 opponent – unless she opposes Judge Kavanaugh.  Donors are asked to make a financial pledge and then enter their credit-card information.  As of Tuesday afternoon, 37,425 people had put down $1,041,878.

The fine print makes clear the quid pro quo: "Your card will only be charged if Senator Susan Collins votes for Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court."  To avoid the money bomb, all Ms. Collins must do is vote "no."

That cash, by the way, snowballed to $2.9 million at the latest reading, an intimidating prospect, indeed.

Money didn't work, and Collins called it what it was: bribery.  The Wall Street Journal in its editorial above explained why that was accurate:

But federal law defines the crime of bribery as "corruptly" offering "anything of value" to a public official, including a Member of Congress, with the intent to "influence any official act."  The crowdfunders in this case are offering something of value – withholding funds from her opponent – in return for a Supreme Court confirmation vote.

"I have had three attorneys tell me that they think it is a clear violation of the federal law on bribery," Ms. Collins says.  "Actually, two told me that; one told me it's extortion."

Second, the left tried rabid threats and piggery.  According to USA Today:

Collins, in particular, seems to have become the focus of the stop-Kavanaugh movement.

The senator's office has reported receiving threatening calls and letters as well as more than 3,000 wire coat hangers in grim a reference to the unsafe, illegal abortions that abortion-rights defenders say would follow the end of Roe v. Wade.  And a controversial crowdfunding campaign has raised more than $1.1 million to give to a future Collins opponent if she votes to confirm Kavanaugh.

Well, that didn't work.  Leftist threats to rape Collins's staffers in the name of standing up for women's "health" had a weird way of not being persuasive.

They then tried political warnings.

The Huffington Post warned that if Collins voted for Kavanaugh, she was commiting "political suicide" because Democrats were going to win anyway.  More persuasive.

They also tried symbolism, mailing her thousands of coat hangers, as if coat hanger abortions were just around the corner (instead of going on now, given the state of supposedly "safe" abortion clinics).  Lovely.  Way to persuade, Democrats.

All of this was well before Blasey Ford's accusations came out, and when that happened, the left just escalated: leftists flooded her with protests and warnings and the wails of domestic violence survivors turned activists.  According to left-wing Vox:

She became "the most sought-after senator in Washington," as Vox's Dylan Scott put it, meeting with multiple sexual assault survivors as she weighed her final decision on Kavanaugh.

Vox noticed that she was specially targeted as a woman, and then whined at the end of its piece that she was supposed to be independent – which, to the left, means always voting Democrat.

When Collins refused to be pushed around by that, leftists let the dogs out.

Planned Parenthood declared her a heretic, saying she could no longer call herself "a champion of women's rights" as the famous sellers-of-baby-parts outfit defines such things.

Now they are talking Senate challenges – this, to a multi-term senator who won her seat with two thirds of Maine's voters.  Former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice and a minor left-wing Maine politician, Rep. Chellie Pingree, along with a much disciplined (and not in a good way) doctor who's constantly in trouble with the authorities, have all thrown their hats in to challenge Collins, though Rice seems to have retracted her offer.  All a lot of voters can see is that there's a big pot of money waiting and probably dollar signs in some of their eyes.  Protests, protests, protests, and now the Senate challenges as the last resort now that there's a heretic to burn.

The New York Times, in a 2,000-word piece on Collins, failed to mention any of this disgustingness. As Rubio said, the tactics were far fouler than reported.

Yet Collins stood firm, scolded the hell out of the Democrats, seeing right through them, and the left isn't stopping.  It continues its campaign to vilify, threaten, and harass her, so her massive majority among Maine's voters is now likely to just get bigger now.  Voters notice these things.  And Collins is standing tall and powerful.  Funny that the left, despite getting slapped in its fat mug for its "persuasion" tactics over and over, hasn't.  It just wants to keep coming back for more.