If you get Jim Geraghty's invaluable Morning Jolt, you've already read that Senator Chuck Grassley, a key figure in the Republican stand against Supreme Court nominee hearings before the next administration, is standing firm.
Many people are probably too angry and emotional at this point to give any member of the GOP establishment, so called, due credit for anything. They are too mad about what they perceive as betrayals by the establishment. In many of the things hailed as GOP capitulations, there were lots of moving parts and the Republicans couldn't do as well as conservatives might have wanted. But in this there are no moving parts and everything depends on GOP fortitude in the face of what undoubtedly will be savage media attacks. So far the wall is holding.
Senator Harry Reid has delivered daily speeches on the Senate floor attacking Grassley. Some of these speeches have gotten personal. So far the eighty-two-year old Republican is not budging, even though he faces a Democratic challenger who will make the most of his court stand.
Geraghty writes:
. . . but [Grassley's] willingness to take the criticism for this stance is worth noting for two reasons. First, there was a time when Grassley was more likely to be more conciliatory to President Obama, to be seen as “bipartisan” and so on.
He was perceived as a “moderate,” voted to confirm Eric Holder, and was, for a while, trying to work out a compromise version of the Affordable Care Act. Years of Obama being Obama, trolling and mocking and ignoring Congress, have demonstrated to Grassley there’s no point in trying to appear “bipartisan” or conciliatory.
Second, if there were signs Grassley was willing to hold hearings or support an Obama nominee, the conservative grassroots would raise hell and support a primary challenger.
So if there’s willingness to denounce and punish deviations from the conservative position, why isn’t there corresponding willingness to praise and support a lawmaker who takes the conservative position, particularly when it’s tough?
I share some of the taste for anger that is afoot in the land, but I am quite specific about the targets of my anger–and it is not the GOP. Sure, there have been mistakes from elected Republicans and some very big and disappointing ones at that. However, I agree with Mona Charen, who argued in a recent brilliant piece that many conservatives over the last few years have whipped up an anger that is misdirected and self-defeating. It wasn't, after all, the GOP that gave us ObamaCare and a feckless foreign policy.
I don't agree with some of the specifics in Mona's column,but overall she is spot on about the self-defeating anger we're seeing.
And, by the way, kudos, Senator Grassley. Gutsy stand.