Sen. Susan Collins' (R-ME) peculiar voting pattern was called out Wednesday by the anti-Trump publication The Bulwark.
National politics reporter Joe Perticone noted in the piece that Republican activist Charlie Kirk was "at worst" only "half wrong" when he said, "Susan Collins is always there when we need her."
Collins is often among just a handful of senators who prove to be a key vote on important GOP policies and Trump nominations.
"But it’s not always easy to anticipate how she’ll decide to vote," the report noted. "Since the start of the second Trump presidency, Collins’s voting behavior has been confounding."
Collins voted to confirm conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, despite questions about his views on vaccines and his experience. She also voted for Joe Kent as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, despite his ties to Neo Nazis, Pam Bondi for attorney general, and Tulsi Gabbard as Trump's spy chief.
"So far, so MAGA," noted Perticone.
But she's voted against Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary over questions of inexperience, and opposed Kash Patel to head the FBI over his brazen politicization of the office. She voted against embattled Emil Bove for a lifetime appeals court judgeship, but fin favor of Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.
"The problem for the Collins predictors is that her reasons for voting against certain nominees could easily apply to the ones whom she supported," Perticone noted, flagging that she opposed Patel for being too political, but not Pirro, who faces similar criticism.
He said it's "clear" why Collins' votes don't seem to add up.
"What becomes clear when you look at the tallies for each of these confirmation votes is that Collins doesn’t want to shoulder too much of the credit or the blame," he added.
Collins "routinely takes a contrarian view" from the GOP when it's obvious the "damage won’t be massive," said Perticone.
That was evident in her vote against Trump's marquee spending legislation, in which Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.
"Collins gets to claim to have been guided by principle without being subject to the consequences that would have come to anyone responsible for stopping the bill’s passage," he said.