A Question Chuck Grassley Needs to Answer
Does he, too, endorse Hershel Walker?
I think Senator Chuck Grassley needs to answer some questions, in light of the emergency visit this week to Georgia by Republican Senate Campaign Committee (RSCC) Chair Rick Scott, who raced there in a desperate effort to try to rescue Republican US Senate candidate Hershel Walker.
Let’s start with these: Does Grassley believe Hershel Walker ought to be a U.S. Senator? Does he, like his party’s Senate Campaign Committee Chair, endorse Walker?
Hold on, some will say. Grassley doesn’t have a dog in that fight. Why should he answer that question?
Well, there are several reasons.
First, when candidates run for public office, the public asks the questions and the candidates answer them. It’s kind of like a job interview. You want the job? Tell us what you think.
Second, Grassley does have a dog in this fight. A big one.
The reason Rick Scott just flew to Georgia to embrace the biggest package of damaged goods Republicans have put on a ballot in modern history, is because if Republicans have any hope of regaining a Senate majority Walker has to win. At least that’s what the math says. With new allegations - with literal receipts - of multiple abortions requested and paid for, erupting seemingly daily, and even his own son denouncing him as a liar and a man who acts like he’s never even heard of family values, much less respects them, Walker’s Senate campaign is a hot mess.
By publicly embracing Walker, Scott made clear that Walker remains a big part of the Republican team, its hopes for Election Day - and to just to make sure nobody missed it - key to their dream of regaining a Senate majority.
Grassley is much more than an uninterested bystander in all this.
As the longest currently serving Republican in the US Senate, Grassley has a big stake in Republicans regaining the majority. It was Grassley’s seniority and the chairmanship of Senate Judiciary Committee that seniority and a Republican majority made possible, that allowed Grassley to be the central character in Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s high handed heist of the US. Supreme Court seat that President Barack Obama had every right to make in his final year as President.
McConnell couldn’t have pulled off that brazen banditry without being in the majority, without Grassley’s seniority and chairmanship, and without Grassley’s willingness to follow McConnell’s partisan marching orders.
The rest is history. Sad history, to be sure. Just ask any woman who saw her constitutional right to make her own health care decisions stripped away, by a court that would not exist in its current configuration if not for a Republican Senate majority, Grassley’s Chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, and his willingness to be McConnell’s bag man in the Great Supreme Court Robbery.
Majorities in the US Senate are important. Very important.
Scott’s RSCC, which launched the rescue mission in Georgia is “all in” on Grassley’s race in Iowa as well. Scott and the RSCC are sending money and surrogates by the trainload to Iowa to implore Iowans to re-elect Grassley.
Here are just a few of the questions I think Grassley needs to answer:
How does Senator Grassley feel about standing shoulder to shoulder with Hershel Walker, in a party that continues to embrace Hershel Walker? Is Grassley comfortable being in the same boat as Hershel Walker? Does he, too, feel it is absolutely vital to elect to the US Senate, as a Republican, a man:
who not only asked women he impregnated to get an abortion, multiple times, but paid for them?. And now claims he favors outlawing abortion;
who tells lies so frequently, so broadly, and so big, one has to wonder if he even knows how to tell the truth;
who has falsely claimed to have worked in law enforcement and to have owned and led major businesses;
who claimed to have graduated from college in the top 1% of his class, but didn’t;
who has multiple secret kids he did not raise and did not support.
To be sure, Iowa’s Senate race is not about Hershel Walker.
It is about Chuck Grassley.
So how about it Chuck?
How do you feel having a man like Hershel Walker be the key to regaining a Republican Senate majority?
Is re-gaining a Republican majority in the Senate worth making a mockery of everything Republicans say they believe in and stand for - and come to think of it - is it worth making a mockery, too, of everything you claim you believe in and stand for?
If your Republican Party is willing to betray the family values it claims to stand for, to embrace hypocrisy like it is the holy grail, to treat the truth like a cheap party trick - nothing more - and to treat women and the children they bear as irritating and inconvenient, to be hidden away and ignored - by sending a rescue squad to carry Hershel Walker across the finish line, just what exactly does your party actually stand for?
And what do you stand for, if you are willing to stand by and not bother to even clear your throat as they do all that?
I think Chuck Grassley needs to speak up. Step up. Own up. Is he actually “good” with all this? If he is, he should tell us. If he isn’t, he should say so.
Every voter and every reporter who sees Chuck Grassley between now and Election needs to ask him: “Do you, like RSCC Chair Rick Scott, endorse Hershel Walker? Do you think he ought to be a US Senator?”
Senator Grassley probably won’t like it when we ask. But that’s ok. Running for re-election is like a job interview. You want the job? Tell us what you think.