But Collins and Murkowski care a lot about women’s issues; their joint stand was the logical outcome of a year that’s been marked by an utter Republican indifference to women. Both serve on the Senate committee that handles health care — a fact that did not appear to impress Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when he appointed 13 men to get together behind closed doors and write a health care bill.

The plan the guys came up with made no attempt to control insurance costs for maternal care. It would end the requirement that health care plans cover contraceptives. And it would bar Medicaid reimbursements for any services provided by Planned Parenthood.

“It was a huge mistake for the Republican leadership to put that in there. Lisa and Susan were clear from the start — you hurt Planned Parenthood and we’re not with it,” said Patty Murray, the leading Democrat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The week before the health care debacle Representative Blake Farenthold, a very conservative and extremely strange lawmaker from Texas, told a radio interviewer he was irritated with the way the women were holding things up, adding, “If it was a guy from South Texas I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.”

It was a remarkable comment and only in part because you do not find many politicians who express a desire to be like Aaron Burr. Farenthold was actually talking about shooting the women.

Collins seemed unmoved. She mentioned the incident in a private conversation with a colleague that happened to be picked up by a politician’s greatest enemy, the hot mike. She briefly made fun of Farenthold’s very large physique and asked, ”Did you see the picture of him in his pajamas next to this Playboy bunny?” She later apologized. Nobody should mock people’s physical appearance. However, to be fair, men who are planning a political career should not pose for photographs while wearing blue pajamas covered with yellow ducks.

That conversation — with Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island — was actually more important for the way it captured the growing feeling in the Senate that the president was more than just a little eccentric.

“I think — I think he’s crazy,” said Reed. To which Collins responded, “I’m worried.”

As are we all.