Democrats in the Senate are nearly unanimous in their support for the filibuster despite holding the exact opposite position just a few years ago.

In fact, it was Democrat majority leader Harry Reid who began to dismantle the filibuster when, in 2013, he employed his own "nuclear option" in order to approve all federal judges except supreme court nominees.  At that time, it was Republicans in opposition – a position they have also flipped on in 2017.

Now, with the nomination of a Republican supreme court justice, Democrats are singing a different tune.  Their battle cry is "minority rights" – as if that mattered at all in 2013 when they first blew up the filibuster. 

It's just one reason why today, the current majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is expected to use the nuclear option to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Washington Times:

The latest fight is over Judge Neil Gorsuch, who is President Trump's first nominee to the Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuch has been designated to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Republicans say he is the perfect candidate, with tremendous legal credentials and a stellar career on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he established a record of agreement and careful scholarship.

Democrats have myriad objections. They fear he would overturn precedent establishing a right to abortion and precedent guaranteeing First Amendment political free speech rights while protecting corporate plaintiffs, and they say he would roll back established powers of the federal bureaucracy.

Some Democrats also say the entire nomination is tainted because it was made from a list Mr. Trump released during the election campaign, assembled with help from the conservative Federalist Society. Mr. Trump, they contend, shouldn't be allowed to name a nominee while his campaign is under FBI investigation, and Judge Gorsuch is a fair sacrifice after Republicans blocked consideration last year of President Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.

"We Democrats have principled reasons to vote against this nominee," Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said. "We Democrats believe the answer isn't to change the rules; it's to change the nominee."

Republicans fire back at Schumer by claiming that the liberal minority leader and his party wouldn't support any nominee acceptable to the president.  We know this to be true because the Democrats' rabid base would primary any senator who dared support any nominee Trump would send up to the Senate for confirmation.  The only nominee they would support would be a liberal judge in the same vein as Sonia Sotomayor or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  And that's simply not going to happen.

So that's the situation today, as McConnell prepares to alter the course of Senate history.  Eventually, Republicans may rue the day they changed the rules and went nuclear. 

But that day is not today, and Gorsuch is poised to re-establish a conservative majority in the Supreme Court.