Alex Skopic for Current Affairs:
When Chuck Grassley was born in 1933, Hitler and Stalin were both still alive, and the chocolate chip cookie had not yet been invented. When he was first elected to the Iowa state legislature in 1958, segregation and Jim Crow were still in full effect, and would be for another six years. When he became a U.S. senator in 1980, it was part of the “Reagan Revolution” that created the Republican Party as we know it today—and Grassley was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, who reportedly gave him “an eight out of ten for his voting record.” One of his first big decisions in Washington was to vote against the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983, although he insists he was just concerned about the expense of giving federal workers another day off. Simply put, this guy has been in Congress forever, outlasting six successive presidents. Now, at age 92, he visibly struggles to read statements on the Senate floor—but that hasn’t stopped him from filing the paperwork to run for yet another term in 2028, when he’d be 95. More likely, if the actuarial tables are anything to go by, he’ll follow in the footsteps of Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Gerry Connolly, and simply drop dead in office one of these days.
A damning indictment of Sen. Grassley, the Democratic Party and our entire political system.