This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Arguing for doing away with the filibuster of Supreme Court judges this week, Sen. Orrin Hatch made clear enough was enough and the system needed to change.

"My Republican colleagues and I are fed up with the Democrats' antics. We will no longer be bound by their games and petty partisanship," Hatch said in a speech on the Senate floor.

This is the same guy who was incredulous at the prospect of getting rid of the filibuster less than five months ago.

"Are you kidding? I'm one of the biggest advocates for the filibuster," Hatch told The Huffington Post last November. "It's the only way to protect the minority, and we've been in the minority a lot more than we've been in the majority. It's just a great, great protection for the minority."

The fact that Hatch is a feckless partisan is hardly news. And he's not alone in a Senate full of members whose positions change with which party is in control.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was all for the "nuclear option" — changing the Senate rules to get rid of the filibuster — in 2005, when Republicans were in the majority and against it when Democrats went nuclear in 2013, wiping out the filibuster for Cabinet positions and federal court nominees, except for the Supreme Court.

Some of the same Democrats who supported the nuclear option in 2013, after Republicans had filibustered a record-shattering 27 of President Barack Obama's nominees, are bemoaning the GOP's parliamentary move this week.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for example, said in 2013 that, if Republicans kept filibustering nominees, then "senators not only have the right to change the filibuster rules, senators have a duty to change the filibuster rules."

On Trump's nominee, Neil Gorsuch, Warren flipped, saying, "A Supreme Court justice should have broad support. And if they can't have broad support, don't change the rule, change the nominee."

I get it. Democrats are angry. Rightly so.

The Republicans spent 10 months running out the clock on the nomination of Merrick Garland, who Hatch had previously called an outstanding judge. It was an unprecedented and brazen tactic based on an argument — that the Senate doesn't confirm Supreme Court justices in the last year of a presidency — that was not just factually incorrect but embarrassing.

And unfortunately it worked, proving there is no justice when it comes to justices.

Gorsuch was going to be confirmed; that has been a foregone conclusion for weeks, a simple question of math.

By attempting to filibuster Gorsuch, a move bound to make Republicans go nuclear, Democrats played the only decent card they had in their hand too early in Trump's tenure.

What happens next time Trump gets to pick a nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is 84, for example? She will probably live forever, but if she does leave the court, her replacement could fundamentally change the ideological balance of the court.

Yes, Republicans could have invoked the nuclear option down the road when Judge Awful is nominated to be Justice Awful. But at least then Democrats could have hoped to break off moderate Republicans — perhaps a Sen. John McCain, who called those wanting to change the Senate rules "stupid idiots," but supported doing it anyway — and keep that from happening.

It's a big "if," but if nothing else, the existence of the filibuster may have forced Trump to think twice about who he nominates next time.

Instead, now he gets carte blanche to choose whatever ideologue he wants and Democrats, having wasted their only firewall, are left with zero options to stop it.

@RobertGehrke