As a lifelong Democrat, I have not particularly admired Grassley, nor thought him aboveboard.  His “I’m just a farmer” stance, doing farm work one week a year while he and his family raked in a million bucks in farm subsidies, seems duplicitous. His lame attempts to rant about $700 Department of Defense hammers while never doing anything serious to vote down the defense budget is also annoying.

However, I understand partisan politics and thought, like many Iowans, well, we have one, and they have one.  It was handy, when my Republican friends complained about Harkin I could complain about Grassley.

More importantly, Grassley never embarrassed me. I disagreed with his priorities, most recently his earmarking $50 million for a fake rainforest in Iowa, the fantastical brainchild of one of his millionaire contributors, Ted Townsend. Nevertheless, that is what you get when you have private money fueling the electoral process.

But all that was before he started talking about “death panels,” suggesting that AIG executives commit suicide, and taking care of “grandma.”  One day he was presenting himself as a serious negotiator in the health care reform debate, the next as a diehard opponent to any health care reform that was not wedded to the free market.

He seems to have morphed into the most cantankerous old coot of the heartland.  In Pocohantas, he stood silent when a constituent at a health care forum, standing one foot away from him, invited like-minded crazies to go to the White House with their guns. Does Iowa need this kind of national attention?

So, while it is politically incorrect to raise the issue of age and mental competency, I think someone has to ask for the release of his medical records including a mental competency exam. As a voter, I feel like I am wondering if grandpa needs his license pulled, for the sake of everyone else in the electoral process. Is all this an act and he is a perfectly reasonable person? Are the increasing instances of his odd behavior simply political theatre? I hope so, and he can end this difficult speculation by giving us the medical information we need to be reassured that someone is not representing us in the early stages of mental dementia.

The second area of concern is his use of the filibuster.  It confounds me.  Following the lead of his party, Grassley now acts as if a supermajority is needed to pass any legislation in the Senate. Ironically, our founding fathers, usually claimed by conservatives as their private birthright, loudly rejected supermajorities except in limited circumstances.  As a senior senator, I would expect Grassley, even when in the minority, to understand that this voting pattern is a serious danger to our national system of governance. It is a bastardization of our history, antithetical to majority rule and out of character for him to embrace the “sixty votes for anything the opposite party wants to do” rule.

The combination of his behavior and his embrace of supermajority voting has me confused and ashamed by his representation.

Grandpa, we need to talk.

Clara Oleson
West Branch
email Clara