Grassley to meet with Supreme Court nominee Garland Tuesday

Sen. Chuck Grassley, who this week called out Chief Justice John Roberts for politicizing the U.S. Supreme Court, will meet court nominee Merrick Garland on Tuesday - but for breakfast, not his blessing.

The meeting was announced on social media under the Senate Judiciary Committee's Twitter account.

In a conference call Wednesday with Iowa reporters, Grassley said the meeting in the Senate Dining Room will be only a 'courtesy call” and that he would listen to what Garland has to say.

As chairman of the judiciary panel, the Iowa Republican has the power to schedule confirmation hearings for Garland. But he repeatedly said he won't, asserting it's a matter of principle to delay consideration of a potential tiebreaking justice until after a new president takes office in about 10 months.

'Maybe I'll have a lot of questions,” Grassley said of the upcoming meeting with Garland. 'But right now, I don't have any. I think I should be listening.

'You don't have a meeting like this and decide are you going to vote or not vote for them,” said Grassley, who has been a member of the Judiciary Committee since arriving in the Senate in 1981.

In addition to listening, Grassley will deliver a message: 'Why the Senate isn't going to move forward on his nomination.”

'Remember,” Grassley said, 'this isn't about Judge Garland. This is about the principle that people ought to have a voice.”

President Barack Obama nominated Garland, a federal appeals judge in Washington, D.C., after the Feb. 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. If eventually confirmed, Garland would make for the fifth Democratic nominee to the current Supreme Court. It was just the opposite - five Republican appointees out of nine justices - before Scalia's death.

Democrats and Republicans have been trading blame for injecting heavy politics into the Supreme Court. But it was one of the Republican nominees that Grassley called out for criticism on the Senate floor - Chief Justice Roberts, chosen by George W. Bush in 2005.

In a discussion 10 days before the unexpected death of Scalia, Roberts criticized the Senate confirmation process.

'When you have a sharply political, divisive hearing process, it increases the danger that whoever comes out of it will be viewed in those terms,” said Roberts in early February. 'If the Democrats and Republicans have been fighting so fiercely about whether you're going to be confirmed, it's natural for some member of the public to think, well, you must be identified in a particular way as a result of that process.”

On Tuesday night, Grassley took to the floor to say Roberts 'has it exactly backwards” in that respect.

'The justices themselves have gotten political,” he said. 'In fact, many of my constituents believe with all due respect that the chief justice is part of the problem. They believe that the number of his votes have reflected political considerations, not legal ones.”

Roberts at times has infuriated conservatives with his support for upholding the Affordable Care Act, although he sided with many conservatives last year in issuing a stinging minority opinion against same-sex marriage.

'The confirmation process doesn't make the justices appear political,” Grassley said in his speech. 'The confirmation process has gotten political precisely because the court has drifted from the constitutional text, and rendered decisions based instead on policy preferences.”

Later, Grassley implored Roberts: 'Physician, heal thyself.”

But as debate goes on over politicizing the court and who gets blame for it, Garland continues to act as if the controversy is merely a bump in the road.

Nearly 20 GOP senators have agreed to meet with him, although for many of them the support ends there.

But his meetings with Democratic senators frequently have been cause for photo opps and widely publicized. He met Wednesday with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.

Thursday, Obama travels to the University of Chicago, where he is expected to continue trying to mount public pressure on Senate Republicans and their leadership to give Garland hearings and, ultimately, a floor vote.

The administration's strategy appears to be, in true Obama fashion, a long-term one. Rather than launching a full-court press, the White House seems content to make its case with a steady stream of op-eds, media interviews and public remarks.

The idea behind the strategy is to help intensify election-year public pressure on enough Republican senators that Grassley and other Senate leaders give in.

Grassley insists he won't.

CQ-Roll Call contributed to this report.