Chuck Grassley Drops the Ball. Again.

Most senior Republican in the Senate, fails a leadership test at a critical moment

Iowans and all Americans have a right to expect more from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the nation’s most senior Republican senator in terms of length of service, in the face of Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville’s continuing blockade of Senate votes on the confirmation of hundreds of the nation’s top military officers.

The US Secretaries of the US Navy, Air Force, and Army wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post in September that Tuberville’s blockade “is putting our national security at risk.”

This is, to put it mildly, no time to be putting our national security at risk. There are two hot, shooting wars in progress in Ukraine and Gaza, each of which has the potential to explode into wider wars that could draw in the US and other nations - both friend and foe.

Numerous senators - Republican and Democrat - have expressed irritation with what Tuberville is doing and called on him to stop. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he opposes it.

Even Senator Grassley’s Iowa colleague, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), has joined with other Senators to try to find a way to work around Tuberville’s obstruction.

But from Grassley? Crickets.

As a Republican Party elder in the Senate, Grassley has a responsibility to do and say more than he has to confront Tuberville on the damage he is doing to the nation’s military. At least Grassley has an obligation to talk with Tuberville about the need to drop his blockade. I mean, for a party that parades itself as a strong supporter of the military, it’s not a very good look for a member of that party to be simultaneously gutting and hollowing out the top military leadership positions.

Senator Grassley is failing that test of leadership on all counts. He has failed to show the leadership one might expect from the Senate’s senior Republican when a junior Republican senator gets way out of line.

Instead, Grassley has had little to say about Tuberville’s military obstruction, if not outright sabotage. What Grassley has said has been unhelpful and absurd.

Tuberville put his blockade in place by putting “holds” on hundreds of top level military promotions that require Senate confirmation. Why? He doesn’t like the Pentagon’s policy which allows reimbursement to members of the military who travel to obtain reproductive health care, including abortions and in vitro fertilizations.

His blockade has nothing to do with the people nominated for promotions. His blockade - which puts national security at risk - is literally over travel reimbursement policies for military men and women.

The time for Grassley - the senior Republican senator - to have a heart to heart, tough love “chat” - with the junior fellow-Republican Tuberville is long overdue.

Instead, Grassley continues to drop the ball. At a most inopportune time.

In my view, the world and the US military are currently in the most perilous and dangerous circumstances since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Yet, thanks to Tuberville and the enabling silence from Grassley and other Republicans like him who prefer silence to confronting one of their own when they are going down a dangerous path, the Pentagon leadership structure is far from ready to meet current threats.

Consider the following:

• According to a Pentagon statement in late August, the required Senate confirmations of 301 generals and admirals who have been nominated for promotions have been indefinitely blocked by Tuberville’s “holds.”

• By the end of the year, the Pentagon says, that number could rise to 650 generals and admirals who need Senate confirmation but can’t get it due to Tuberville’s holds.

With the world growing more dangerous by the hour, one might think Senator Grassley would have something to say about this situation.

But no.

Now think about this: when armies go to war against each other, a major objective for each side is to disrupt the command and control structure of the other side and to decapitate its leadership structure.

That is exactly what Tuberville is accomplishing - against the US - with his indefinite holds on hundreds of US military leaders, at a time when the US. military could well be required to turn on a dime and fight on a grand scale.

Grassley has been remarkably silent about this. Negligently so, in my view. Negligent as a Republican. As an Iowan. As an American.

Even worse, what he has said is not only unhelpful, but, frankly, embarrassing.

He has he not objected to Tuberville’s blockade. He essentially endorsed it. He worried in a June 28, 2023, CNN article that the Senate might over react to Tuberville’s “holds” and change its rules to put an end to them and others like them.

Seriously. That’s what he was worried about.

“We should make sure that we give each senator as much power as we can,” Grassley said. “It was meant to be that way, it’s always been that way, I just want to make sure it isn’t abused to the point where we maybe change the rules, that’s a slippery slope.”

See the thing we have to guard against, according to Mr. Grassley, is changing Senate rules so Tuberville and others like him can’t do in the future, what Tuberville is doing today. Using Senate “holds” to endanger national security.

If the US military is not ready to meet the current grave danger because of widespread vacancies in the Pentagon’s top leadership, created by a single Republican US Senator - who is upset over travel reimbursement policies at the Pentagon - well, that is nothing we need to worry about according to Senator Grassley. The dangerous “holds” that are putting our national security at risk are not the problem.

The problem, as he apparently sees it, is the possibility that some Senator in a nice safe and comfy office in Washington, DC might lose some power. There’s your problem.

Spoken like a true Washington insider who stayed too long in the Senate.

To be sure, Chuck Grassley did not put Tommy Tuberville’s holds in place. Senator Tuberville did that. Tuberville continues to keep them there.

But Senator Grassley is doing nothing to stop them, or to have them removed. In fact, he seems to accept and encourage them. Even as other Republican senators speak out against them and try to get Tuberville to drop them.

Chuck Grassley’s position as the most senior Republican in the Senate bestows upon him, certainly within his party, a responsibility that comes from experienced leadership.

He needs to show some of that leadership now.

Senator Grassley may no longer be up to it, but at least he ought to try.

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