Senator Chuck Grassley faced more critics than usual at his home-state public events during a two-week Congressional recess, and major Iowa newspapers continue to weigh in against the Senate Judiciary Committee chair’s determination not to give Judge Merrick Garland any confirmation hearings.

But in a 20-minute speech on the Senate floor yesterday, Grassley defended the Republicans’ determination to let the “American people weigh in on this important matter,” adding that “I am no stranger to political pressure and to strong-arm tactics.” The same day, Grassley told Senate Judiciary Committee colleagues he came away from his meetings in Iowa “feeling positive about the position we had taken,” saying “the recess reinforced my thinking” about the Supreme Court vacancy.

Meanwhile, earlier this week Iowa’s senior senator took the extraordinary step of attacking Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. One legal commentator called that speech “close to breathtaking in its intemperate incoherence.”

On April 5, former Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson led a group of Iowans who met with Grassley and held a press conference outside the U.S. Supreme Court building to call for hearings and an eventual vote on Garland’s nomination. Other participants included Scott County Attorney Mike Walton, Hamilton County Supervisor Doug Bailey, Drake University Law School Professor Mark Kende, and onetime Grassley staffer Ross Daniels.

Grassley had a strong message for his critics in his Senate floor speech yesterday (full video here). After repeating his usual talking points about the supposedly “principled” decision not to give President Barack Obama’s nominee any consideration this year, Grassley described the intense “pressure” Democrats and aligned interest groups are bringing to bear against himself and other Republicans. He then recounted several examples of times he had stood up to strong-arm tactics, mostly from Republican administrations. Grassley promised not to change his stand on hearings for Garland (starting at the 19:15 mark):

The fact is, the pressure they’ve applied thus far has had no impact on this senator’s principled position and I would have to say, the principled position of almost everybody on this side of the aisle […]. Our side knows, and our side believes that what we’re doing is right. And when that’s the case, it’s not hard to withstand the outrage and the pressure they’ve manufactured. And the headquarters for that is the White House.

Also yesterday, Grassley presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Executive Business Meeting. From the prepared remarks his office released:

I’d like to share a few thoughts from my meetings with Iowans during the last couple weeks.

I spent the past couple weeks in Iowa with constituents. I had three town meetings and 16 visits to schools, businesses, factories, and hospitals. It’s no surprise that the public is concerned about the future of the Supreme Court these days. That may be why national advocacy groups like NARAL [the National Abortion Rights Action League] sent representatives to my Iowa town meetings. The Iowans I met over the past couple of weeks told me that they’re concerned about it, too.

Everyday Iowans want the opportunity to weigh in on the direction of the Court for a generation. That’s not the story the press wants to write, but it’s true.

They’ve also told me they’re concerned that the Court makes politically-based decisions about important constitutional rights. These decisions have a real impact on their families, their ability to practice their faith, and their freedom to bear arms.

So, I came away from those meetings feeling positive about the position we had taken before the recess. In other words, the recess reinforced my thinking.

Grassley is supposed to have breakfast with Garland next week. I don’t see the point of a face-to-face meeting if confirmation hearings are not on the table, but Garland is making the rounds with other Senate Republicans.

Since Obama nominated the relatively moderate appeals court judge, I’ve wondered whether the GOP blockade may crack if the party appears likely to lose its Senate majority and the presidency this fall. Democrats need a net gain of five Senate seats to take control (four if a Democrat wins the presidency). GOP incumbents in Illinois and Wisconsin already trail their Democratic challengers in polls. At least four other GOP-held Senate seats are now considered tossups (Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Florida).

Some Republican senators have hinted that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, they might be open to confirming Garland during the lame-duck session, to prevent someone more liberal being named to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. For what it’s worth, Grassley has ruled out that scenario, Jason Noble reported for the Des Moines Register on March 29.

Grassley, an Iowa Republican and chairman of the committee that oversees judicial nominations in the Senate, unequivocally ruled out a “lame-duck” appointment in comments to about 90 people a mid-morning town hall meeting on the campus of Northwestern College here [in Orange City].

“I can’t have one opinion saying the people ought to decide and then preempt that (depending on) whoever’s (elected) president – Hillary or Trump or Cruz or Kasich or anybody else,” Grassley told reporters after the event. “I’ve got to be consistent.” […]

He was confronted on whether he would hold to that even with the election of Clinton by Rein Vanderhill, a retired art teacher from nearby Alton.

“Whoever the American people elect in November, you can’t question that and you have to hold to that decision,” Grassley replied. “If it’s Hillary Clinton you get one sort of nominee and if it’s some Republican president you get another.” […]

When pressed by a reporter whether that risked the appointment of a more liberal judge than Garland, Grassley said the principle was worth the potential outcome.

“In a democracy, you can’t argue with the decision of the electorate,” he said. “You have to accept it.”

Standing up to pressure from Democratic-aligned groups or Iowa newspaper editorial boards is one thing. I’m skeptical Grassley would hold the line against GOP colleagues demanding a lame-duck confirmation of Garland. We shall see, if the worst-case scenario for Republicans unfolds this November.

Meanwhile, Grassley decided to pick a fight with Chief Justice John Roberts this week. Before Scalia died, Roberts said in a speech that the Supreme Court confirmation “process is not functioning very well.” Mike Zapler reported for Politico on April 5,

“In fact, many of my constituents believe, with all due respect, that the chief justice is part of the problem,” Grassley said of Roberts, who has at times incensed conservatives with his votes to uphold Obamacare and other rulings. “They believe that [a] number of his votes have reflected political considerations, not legal ones.”

“The chief justice has it exactly backwards,” Grassley also said. “The confirmation process doesn’t make the justices appear political. The confirmation process has gotten political precisely because the court itself has drifted from the constitutional text and rendered decisions based instead on policy preferences.”

Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) applauded the senator on Twitter: “nice job schooling Chief Justice on separation of powers to stay out of legislation business. Thanks!”

Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was not impressed.

In defense of his position, Grassley gave a speech on the Senate floor that was close to breathtaking in its intemperate incoherence. The speech was an extended attack on Chief Justice John Roberts, who had recently expressed the unexceptional view that the Court should stay out of partisan politics as much as possible.

Grassley scolded Roberts, saying, in effect, that if the Chief Justice himself had not become so political in his decision-making, the Court would be a lot more popular.

[…] Grassley’s grievance was with two cases in particular, in which Roberts wrote opinions upholding the Affordable Care Act, in 2012 and 2015. Those apostasies from the conservative party line have turned Roberts into a pariah among congressional conservatives, even the Chief Justice’s onetime friend Ted Cruz.

This hostility to Roberts comes in the face of the Chief Justice’s down-the-line conservatism in nearly every other case of his decade in office. Roberts joined the majority in Citizens United and in Shelby County (which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act), and he dissented in Windsor, the case that invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act, and Obergefell, which brought same-sex marriage to all fifty states. The decisions Grassley disagrees with are “political,” whereas the ones he likes are, presumably, just good judging. The crudeness of Grassley’s attack on Roberts, from a senator who claims to want to avoid a politicization of the court, is astonishing.

Any comments on or predictions about the Supreme Court controversy are welcome in this thread.

P.S.- This week political forecaster Larry Sabato changed his rating on Iowa’s U.S. Senate race from “safe Republican” to “likely Republican.” However, Sabato said he did so “mostly out of an abundance of caution,” and noted Grassley still has high approval ratings.

P.P.S- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid hammered Grassley in a Senate floor speech on April 6. Text as released by Reid’s office:

I’m here to defend Chief Justice John Roberts. I’m here because he has been attacked, without cause, by the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Yesterday afternoon the senior senator from Iowa hit a new low in trying to justify his unprecedented obstruction of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee accused Chief Justice John Roberts of being, “part of the problem” when it comes to the politicization of the Supreme Court. That is without any foundation.

I don’t agree with the chief justice on every opinion that he’s rendered. Nor, frankly, do I agree with any of the other seven justices on every opinion that they render. But again, I don’t agree with the chief justice on many of the opinions that he’s written. But his observations about the Supreme Court confirmation process have obviously struck a nerve in the Republican caucus.

Here’s what happened: Days before Justice Scalia’s death – before anyone could have anticipated a Supreme Court vacancy – Chief Justice Roberts made the common-sense assertion that partisan politics hurt our nation’s highest court.

This is what Chief Justice Roberts said:

“When you have a sharply political, divisive hearing process, it increases the danger that whoever comes out of it will be viewed in those terms…It’s natural for some member of the public to think you must be identified in a particular way as a result of that process. And that’s just not how — we don’t work as Democrats or Republicans. I think it’s a very unfortunate perception the public might get from the confirmation process.”

I was a member of the Senate when we had the hearings regarding Justice Roberts. He came from the same court that Merrick Garland served on. They served together, and they are friends. And in the past, Justice Roberts has said many glowing things about Merrick Garland.

But now, Senator Grassley has the audacity to accuse Roberts as being part of the problem, even going so far as to tell the Chief Justice: “Physician, heal thyself.” I say to the senior senator from Iowa, Justice Roberts isn’t the one who needs healing. What needs mending is the Judiciary Committee under his chairmanship, which he has annexed as a political arm of the Republican leader’s office. Senator Grassley has sacrificed the historical independence of the Judiciary Committee in order to do the bidding of the Tea Party and the Koch brothers.

I have news for Senator Grassley: The American people don’t think the process of nominating a Supreme Court Justice is political because the Supreme Court’s rulings don’t match an expectation of the political right or the political left. I have confidence that these men and women who serve on the court do the very best they can to rule on the law as they see it.

The American people think it’s political because the senior senator from Iowa is refusing to give a fair hearing to a highly qualified nominee purely because he was nominated by a Democrat.

The American people think it’s political when the Judiciary Committee chairman and the Republicans on his committee meet behind closed doors and make pacts to blockade our nation’s judiciary – from the Supreme Court to the Circuit Court to the District Courts.

I know my friend, who I have served with for decades in this body, is grasping for something – anything – to get himself off the hook here. President Harry Truman said, “the buck stops here.” Senator Grassley wants the buck to stop with anyone but himself. He has done more to politicize this process than any chairman in history.

If the senior senator from Iowa really wants to understand why Americans think the process of nominating Supreme Court justices is so partisan, he should consider his own actions. He has only himself to blame for not doing his job.