United States Senator Susan Collins believes in a woman’s right to choose abortion, thinks it is time for urgent action on global climate change, and says the US can’t afford tax breaks for the wealthy right now.
Nothing unusual about that, except that she is a Republican in the age of Karl Rove and the ”wedge issue”.
Visiting South Africa two weeks ago, along with Senate minority whip Dick Durbin and Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee, for a conference hosted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the South African Institute of International Affairs, Collins was doing her best to keep a jetlagged eye on the post-election world back home.
Not surprisingly, life in the new, confidently conservative Republican Party of George W Bush isn’t always easy for lawmakers who hew to the middle ground, but Collins says that is what voters in her solidly Democratic home state of Maine want.
”It is very comfortable in Maine. But it is less comfortable in Washington where the party has become very conservative in recent years.
”In the north-east, the Republican Party tends to be fiscally conservative but socially moderate. Concerned about a woman’s right to choose, and concerned about escalating deficits.”
Some Republicans reckon this sounds just like a moderate Democratic platform, but Collins argues that she is in tune with her constituency, and her own convictions.
”I’m from a state that voted for John Kerry, they would not accept any other approach.”
And she suggests that she still has some leverage with hardline Senate Republicans, such as speaker Trent Lott of Utah, because Republican control of the upper house is not quite total. ”Moderate Republicans still control the balance of power in the Senate. Sixty votes are needed to end debate, and there are now 55 Republican seats.
”We often can reach out to moderate Democrats to generate significant votes”.
Moderate Republicans can also side with the Democrats to delay or modify legislation. ”While there is a lot of pressure from within the party, [the] leadership realises we can forge a compromise. I like working with colleagues from both side of the aisle.”
During the conference she spent time monitoring the progress of one such collaboration — a sweeping reform of intelligence laws co-authored with Dick Durbin.
Their Bill, which creates a new national intelligence directorate, is a response to the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, which investigated intelligence failures leading to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in 2001.
Despite overwhelming bipartisan approval in the Senate, that Bill now looks dead, after running into heavy political static in Congress.
”It is very frustrating, but unless the president intervenes, it doesn’t seem like it will go anywhere,” says Collins.
She was also tracking the Senate confirmation hearings of attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzalez, who has been criticised for his laissez-faire attitude to human rights abuses by US troops in Iraq, but seems more moderate on abortion rights and other social questions than John Ashcroft, his predecessor.
”He’ll be confirmed. The Democrats will just be so pleased to see Ashcroft gone,” Collins says.
She doesn’t quite admit that she’ll be glad to see him gone herself, but she has little truck with the Christian conservatism Ashcroft and his supporters in the evangelical movement have brought to bear on policy.
”I am a practising Catholic, and my faith means a lot to me. But I am uncomfortable with faith and government being combined. It is against our American tradition.
”The current system — separation of church and state — has served my country for a long time.”
Collins is also unlikely to be drafted into an environment or energy policy role by the current administration: a supporter of Kyoto-style carbon controls, she recently described Artic warming as ”the canary in the mine” of the global climate.
”On environmental issues I do have a different approach than the president. I don’t think Kyoto was the perfect answer, but we should have tried to modify it — my key objection was that it didn’t apply to China, which is now one of the world’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. But we do have to act.”
And while she has historically supported lower taxes, she doesn’t think the tottering public finances of the US can sustain the combination of tax cuts and massive new spending that characterised Bush’s first term.
”I voted for the president’s tax cuts on low- and middle-income people, but I am not prepared to make permanent cuts for high-income earners — even if it’s a good idea in principle — with our current fiscal situation.”
Collins also wants more limits on government expenditure, and voted against the $50-billion a year Farm Bill, which most developing countries argue abets the distortion of world markets in agricultural products.
”I was offended by the enormous subsidies it contained,” she says.
Her voting record suggests a softer approach to military spending, however, the hugely controversial and expensive missile defence shield got her vote as, not surprisingly, have all of Bush’s Iraq initiatives.
Collins is up for re-election in four years, when the poster boy of moderate Republicanism, John McCain, will probably take his next shot at the White House.
And solidly Democratic Maine will probably vote her straight back in.