My friend Ed Whelan, a former clerk to Justice Scalia and now a writer for NRO's "Bench Memos," has a piece today from which the title of this post is taken.  Ed writes:

By floating the name of Eighth Circuit judge Jane L. Kelly as a possible Supreme Court nominee, the White House is treating Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley as though he were a chump. The White House is hoping that because Kelly has worked in Iowa since 1994 and because Grassley supported her 2013 nomination to the Eighth Circuit, Grassley might face an "awkward dilemma," as a New York Times article puts it, if Obama were to nominate her. 

I'm glad (but not at all surprised) to see that Grassley has forcefully rejected this ploy, reiterating his position that no nominee this year ("the person doesn't matter, see") will get a hearing. Further:

 "You know, one of the questions I will ask them [in any meeting]," he said of the eventual nominee, will be "what they feel about being used as a political pawn."

The White House must be close to delusional if it thinks Judge Kelly's simply working in Iowa, and having Sen. Grassley return the blue slip for a job on the vastly less important Eighth Circuit, makes it likely, or even realistically possible, that Grassley would support a career criminal defense attorney, without any noticeable scholarship, to fill the seat of an intellectual giant like Justice Scalia.  Sen. Grassley may be making a mistake on sentencing reform (he is in my view), but he is a serious man and a principled conservative who is not about to get hoodwinked by a transparent and, frankly, demeaning stunt.