When I heard Sen. Collins’ tepid remarks about not voting for Trump in her recent news conference, I could not help but think what her mentor Sen. Margaret Chase Smith would think about her.

Barely four months after Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of 205 card-carrying Communists in the U.S. State Department, the freshman senator from Maine stood up in the Senate and challenged her party to embrace a philosophy of “political integrity” and “intellectual honesty.” She went on to say, “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of calumny: fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.”

Not only is that great speechwriting, it is a timeless testament to political courage, even more applicable today than when it was first delivered on June 1, 1950.

To honor her mentor, Sen. Collins should raise her voice and exhort her party to revert to its principles and abandon today’s Four Horsemen of hate: fear, falsehoods, meanness and violence.

Arthur Benedict
Peaks Island