Will the real Chuck Grassley please stand up?

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley has some very stern words for himself. Once upon a time, on Saturday, Grassley agreed with his fellow Republicans that the best way to honor fallen conservahero Antonin Scalia was to immediately tell President Obama to eff all the way off with his ridiculous unconstitutional notions of naming Scalia's replacement, like some kind of president (as if!) whose job it is to do that:

“The fact of the matter is that it’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year," Grassley said.

Well! So long as it's "standard practice" -- which it isn't, ACTUALLY -- for the Senate to abide by its own arbitrary and irrelevant traditions that are in no way binding, are not in the Constitution, and have zero relevance here. Wouldn't want to mess with that.

"Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this president, above all others, has made no bones about his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court Justice.”

Funny how Republicans keep ignoring the inconvenient liberal-bias truth that the American people gave Obama the power (TWICE, MOTHERFUCKERS!) to select Supreme Court justices, so that's all settled and we don't need to wait and see what the American people will do next.

But we digress. And Grassley has evolved since those naive wild-eyed days of yesterweekend. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, which is responsible for advice-and-consenting the president's Supreme Court nominees, he figgered since he "now h v an iphone," he could use it to ask Siri if rejecting the president's nominee before the president even has a nominee is a good idea, yes or nah, not really:

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley isn’t ready to say whether he’ll convene a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on President Obama’s nominee to fill the opening on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decisions,” Grassley told reporters this morning. “In other words, take it a step at a time.”

Why, this new and improved Sen. Grassley almost sounds reasonable! Almost:

“This is a very serious position to fill and it should be filled and debated during the campaign and filled by either Hillary Clinton, Senator Sanders or whoever’s nominated by the Republicans,” Grassley said.

In that case, since it's such a serious position, we can't leave it up to the sitting president to fill it, can we? Better for President Hillz or President Feel-The-Bern to do that job. (Grassley the deer killer might be batshit bonkers, but he's at least coherent enough to know it's prolly not going to be a Republican.)

Oh hey, were you wondering to yourself if Grassley was ever for filling court vacancies during an election year before he was against filling them before he was kinda sorta not completely but mostly opposed to this long-standing standard practice? Good wondering, you!

“The reality is that the senate has never stopped confirming judicial nominees during the last few months of a president’s term,” Grassley said in 2008.

Not that it matters much whether RINO Grassley waits for Obama to nominate Scalia's replacement before saying "Nope!" or whether rightwing Grassley flip-flops back to telling Obama not to even bother. As we all know, the president is just biding his time until he declares martial law, cancels the election, and names himself president for life. Then he'll probably name himself Scalia's replacement too. Typical Obama.

[The Hill / Radio Iowa via POLITICO]