http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/senate-iowa-grassley-supreme-court-221317 Supreme Court vise closes on Grassley
The Judiciary Committee head insists he's not bending in the Garland confirmation clash. But the pressure has only begun.
By Seung Min Kim
03/29/16 05:32 AM EDT
ROCK RAPIDS, Iowa — Sen. Chuck Grassley had just launched his second town hall meeting of the day when a woman posed — at least for Republicans — a worst-case scenario: What if Hillary Clinton wins in November and nominates someone more liberal than Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court?
Grassley, standing before more than 120 people in this northwest Iowa town, was unfazed.
“We know that this hearing is going to be strictly a political thing,” Grassley said Monday in the basement of a public library here in conservative Lyon County, where more than 3 in 4 voters chose Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in 2012. “So why spend your time on strictly political stuff — theater — that isn’t going to produce anything?”
As the national battle rages over whether to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia this year, no one is under heavier scrutiny or facing more pressure back home than Grassley, a one-time farmer and sheet metal worker who was first sworn in to the Senate the same month that Ronald Reagan became president.
Democrats are trying to wear down Senate Republicans across the country, but their prime target is Grassley. On Monday, Hillary Clinton, singled out the Judiciary Committee chairman in a major speech, saying he should “step up and do his job. He should hold a hearing, and he should schedule it as soon as the Senate returns from recess.”
The 82-year-old Grassley, a Senate institutionalist to the core, holds the key to such a confirmation hearing. Getting him to relent would be the biggest prize for Democrats, short of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell himself.
But in a series of public appearances across northwest Iowa on Monday, Grassley, who's running for a seventh term this year, showed no signs of backing down. Repeating himself numerous times, sometimes in a stubborn tone, Grassley stressed to voters: Obama has the right to nominate someone, and the GOP-controlled Senate has a right to ignore him.
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