A few weeks ago there was a comment on a Facebook post on The Iowa Standard asking why some Republicans want Sen. Charles Grassley to be primaried, as is being done by State Sen. Jim Carlin. And they asked why Republicans don’t support Sen. Grassley.
I’ve considered the question the last few weeks and prepared what I believe are the most obvious reasons some Iowa Republicans want to see Grassley primaried and why some of them may be more than willing to support Carlin. (Don’t confuse this as an endorsement so much as an answer to a question raised on the Facebook page!)
For many of those desiring a primary against Grassley, it starts with Jan. 6. On Jan. 5, Grassley was quoted as saying he would listen to debate on what his colleagues had to say and decide how to vote on the 2020 Presidential Election results after considering the information before him.
Grassley, like Sen. Joni Ernst, Congressman Randy Feenstra, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson and Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, voted to certify the election results. For many Iowa Republicans who supported President Donald J. Trump, this was a stab in the back in broad daylight.
President Trump received more votes from Iowans than any presidential candidate in history. He won the state convincingly not once, but twice. And Iowa Republicans benefited from Trump’s presence on the ballot. And rather than vote for an audit of the vote — not even a vote to overturn the election, just a vote to “trust, but verify” — Grassley voted to certify the election results.
Nationwide, even 30 percent of Democrats said they believed the election was stolen from President Trump.
But Grassley couldn’t be bothered to vote for a 10-day audit of the vote?
It did not end there, however.
In a Jan. 11 story, Grassley said that President Trump had tarnished his legacy and has little opportunity to lead the GOP.
“Right now, there’s very little opportunity for him to lead the Republican Party,” Grassley said in Newton.
In the same story, Grassley said he was “looking forward” to what Joe Biden’s agenda is. Grassley said he was ready to move ahead to Jan. 20 and work with the Biden Administration.
Grassley publicly advised Trump to “lay low for a long time” on Jan. 12.
At a time when many Iowa Republicans were counting on Grassley to stand up for them, stand up for the integrity of the presidential election and stand up for President Trump, he let them down.
An April 27 story quotes Grassley as saying:
“I think that (Biden) is doing an outstanding job of carrying on the outstanding policies of the Trump administration” in regards to Biden’s handling of COVID-19.
In Grassley’s response to Biden’s address to the joint session of Congress earlier this year, Grassley said that he knows from Biden’s time in the Senate that Biden is “capable of being a bipartisan dealmaker.”
“The question is will his left-wing base let him,” Grassley said.
But the reality is the version of Joe Biden that ran for President in 2020 was much different from the version of Biden who served in the U.S. Senate.
Grassley also hasn’t faced re-election since he called for red flag gun laws while speaking at a fundraiser in 2019.
“Tonight, I’m calling on law-abiding gun owners to lead the charge in the effort to keep dangerous individuals from purchasing guns and to expand access to mental health resources,” Grassley said, according to his prepared remarks.
Just this past week Grassley referred to the killer of Mollie Tibbetts as “undocumented” rather than illegal. This is a small thing, but it matters to many on the right.
We asked Sen. Grassley about the protections afforded to Americans who do not want to receive the COVID injection when it comes to travel.
Grassley said he supposes that if a vaccine were required for travel (airplane, train, etc.) and someone wanted to travel by airplane, Americans “might not be able to travel the way you’d want to travel. You’d have to find other ways of traveling.”
And, of course, there is a certain segment of the GOP electorate who simply do not believe anyone should serve more than 20 years in the U.S. Senate, let alone more than 40 years.
The political landscape has changed enormously since Grassley was first elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 1958. Yes, Grassley has been an elected official since 1959 after he won a race in 1959.
Never mind how much the political landscape has changed since President Trump came down the escalator a handful of years ago.
For many Iowa Republicans, the game is different today than it was five years ago, let alone 50 years ago. Those Iowa Republicans want fighters. They want a U.S. Senator who realizes the Democrat idea of what America should be is no longer anything near compatible to what the Republican idea is.
There are two very different ideas of what America has been, what America is and what America should be.
There is a definite argument to be made that the game has passed up Iowa’s senior senator.
Much of this race will depend on how it is defined. If Grassley is successful in selling Republican primary voters in Iowa that he has consistently fought Joe Biden’s radical agenda, he’ll be fine.
The only hope for Carlin, and anyone else who might challenge Grassley, is to remind the hundreds of thousands of Trump voters in Iowa that when they needed Grassley most, he wasn’t just missing in action, he joined the other side. He voted to certify what even Feenstra and Miller-Meeks have said was an election that featured fraud.
Grassley said that politicians in Washington should not second guess the courts once they have ruled.
“The question before Congress is not whether there are legitimate complaints about how elections were conducted; only whether to accept or reject entirely the electoral votes cast by a state,” Grassley said. “I could not in good conscience vote to disenfranchise an entire state.”
He called votes not to certify the electoral college an effort to undermine the constitutional role of states in elections. Yet he acknowledged concerns about “election irregularities and restoring faith in our election system.”
Any Republican challenger of Grassley has one goal they must achieve to be successful. Make sure every Republican primary voter remembers how Grassley voted on Jan. 6 when they vote in the primary.
It’s the only way for a successful primary. And it’s reason enough to make the run.
