Apparently not.
From People For The American Way:
In a letter released [Monday], all 41 Senate Republicans threatened to filibuster President Obama’s judicial nominees unless they were given veto power over judges from their states. The letter also demanded that President Obama renominate ultra-conservative Bush nominees like Peter Keisler, Glen Conrad and Paul Diamond.
[…] “The Senate has an important role in the confirmation process, and in extreme cases when the President has refused to consult with the Senate, the minority has tools to obstruct nominees who are obviously unfit for the bench. Obama looks to be clearing that standard easily,” said [PFAW President Kathryn] Kolbert. “But it was only a few years ago that the GOP was willing to blow up the Senate in order to eliminate the filibuster entirely. They told anyone who would listen that every judicial nominee deserved an up-or-down vote without exception. Apparently, the Senate Republicans have the collective memory of a goldfish.”
You will not find me advocating for that which I opposed a mere three years ago: the so-called Nuclear Option. I will just point out that, under Republican rule, filibustering judges (if done by Democrats) was considered “undemocratic”, even unconsititutional, and so much so that Republicans threatened to alter the rules of the Senate to remove the filibuster entirely. Yet under Democratic rule, and a Democratic President, the Republicans now find themselves agreeing with those they call traitors a mere four years ago.
But I will repeat a refrain that Republicans used four years ago: “Elections have consequences.”
They do. And because they do, these Republicans are in no place to demand anything, much less that all of Bush’s former judicial nominees be renominated by a Democratic President and confirmed without question by a Democratic Senate. Home state Senators of the nominee will still be consulted, whether they be a Republican or a Democrat (a tradition that Bush pissed on four years ago), but otherwise, the nominees will be reflective of the left side of the political spectrum rather than the far right, because, you know, elections do have consequences. The Republicans can use the procedural tools of the Senate that are at their disposal, for we Democrats will not be so unprincipled to do argue for the Nuclear Option.