Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is not responding to an invitation from the White House to discuss a Supreme Court nomination with President Obama.
"Early this week, we extended an invitation to Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Leahy to join President Obama in the Oval Office for a consultative meeting of filling the Supreme Court vacancy," a senior White House official said. "We have not heard back from Chairman Grassley."
Grassley's Judiciary Committee spokeswoman said the senator has received the invitation and that it's "under consideration." She added that Grassley has had a "personal conversation" with Leahy and White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston and spoke with Obama by phone last week.
Ignoring the invitation is, to put it mildly, a break in protocol. To put it more bluntly, it's the logical outgrowth of Republicans' refusal to recognize the legitimacy of this president. In another completely justified break with protocol, Democrat Harry Reid blasted Grassley.
"Sen. Grassley has surrendered every pretense of independence ... so partisan, in fact, that the senior senator from Iowa won't respond to a personal invitation from the president," Reid said in a 10-minute speech almost entirely trained on Grassley.
"Think about that. The president of the United States calls a very senior senator here and doesn't even respond to the president. This is a sad day for one of the proudest committees in the United States Senate," Reid said. "We don't have to go back to 1980 or 1982 to prove the current chairman's ineptness. Look at the spike in judicial emergencies that occurred on Chairman Grassley's watch just in the past year."
Reid continued to point out that Grassley is the "first Judiciary chairman ever to refuse to hold a hearing on a Supreme Court nominee." There's all sorts of precedents being set by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley, and all of them are bad.
You can watch Reid's speech below.