Pressure will now grow only more intense for Senate Republicans to reverse course and start a Supreme Court confirmation process, and none will feel that increasing force more than Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley.

His own words from three decades ago are going to become part of the effort to win a change of heart from the notoriously stubborn Iowan — the latest volley in the “If that was then, why isn’t it this now?” exchange of grainy video clips punctuating this year’s biggest partisan standoff.

“The dangers of politicizing the nomination process are exceeded only by its short-sightedness,” Grassley declared in 1987. “After all, presidential elections and Supreme Court nominations come and go. I urge my colleagues to resist the clarion call of raw politics that undermines the independent judiciary.”

It’s already completely clear how both side’s hands are sullied with evidence of hypocrisy and situational posturing in debates about their “advice and consent” standards for potential justices on the high court.

But the pronouncements Grassley made then about the importance of regular order for such confirmations, which totally contradict the view he’s espousing now, are particularly noteworthy. That’s because Grassley was assigned by his GOP leadership last month to take charge of announcing and touting the centrally important relevance of “the Biden Rules” – based on a speech Joseph R. Biden Jr. made as a Delaware senator two decades before he became vice president.