'One more flavor of cowardice': Rick Wilson shreds Susan Collins for doing the 'bare minimum' to oppose McConnell

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson warned Sen. Susan Collins would suffer a defeat for going along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's scheme to rig the impeachment trial.

Collins was the only Republican senator to break party ranks on one vote over the rules for President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, but Wilson told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that voters shouldn't expect much more of that.

"Look, she's going try to keep the very bare minimum to keep McConnell and Trump from being angry with her, and that bare minimum is insufficient," Wilson said. "That bare minimum is not principled, that is one more flavor of cowardice, in this case, and it's one more problem she's going to accrue by pretending that these are all procedural votes and these are 'nothingburger' votes."

"She's up for a sharp shock in that regard, I think," he added.

MSNBC's Mike Barnicle agreed.

"If you go up to Maine, Portland and places like that, you pick up the fact that many voters are increasingly becoming disappointed in Susan Collins always being disappointed and no more than disappointed," Barncile said, "and underlying that is a story that's hard to get to, hard to report because it has to do with people's emotion, but the irrational fear that Donald Trump has planted in so many candidates and sitting United States senators just like Susan Collins is an undercurrent in this campaign that I have never seen before."