The Wall Street Journal's editorial board attacked Democrats for passing a filibuster rule change as “radicals” who “view the minority as an inconvenience to be rolled,” though the Journal supported the same change in 2005, when it pushed Republicans not to “let a willful minority deny the President's nominees a vote.”

On November 22, the Journal editorial board attacked the rule change -- which allows the Senate to confirm judicial nominees with a simple majority vote -- as “Rules For Radicals,” and claimed that the Democrats' vote was prodded through by “younger liberals in a hurry” who “view the minority as an inconvenience to be rolled.” The Journal falsely claimed that the Senate rule change was “bloody-minded” behavior which would allow Democrats “to pack the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” but found a “silver lining” in the prospect of Republicans using the change for their benefit in the future:

The silver lining is that the end of the nominee filibuster will work for conservatives too. The next time they hold the Senate and White House, Republicans should employ the same weapon. Democrats are pretending that they are only breaking the filibuster for lower-court nominees, not for the Supreme Court. They can dream on.

The Journal seems to have forgotten the fact that it supported a similar push for filibuster reform in 2005. A May 2005 editorial urged Republicans not to “let a willful minority deny the President's nominees a vote on the Senate floor” (emphasis added): 

This will not be the world's greatest deliberative body's greatest moment, and the only thing we know for sure about what will happen next is that the reputation of the Senate will suffer. It's a shame it has come to this. But at this point it would be worse if Republicans let a willful minority deny the President's nominees a vote on the Senate floor.

[...]

This is at its core a political fight, and elections ought to mean something. Republicans have gained Senate seats in two consecutive elections in which judicial nominations were among the most important issues, including against the Senate Minority Leader. The one Democrat from a red state who won last year, Ken Salazar of Colorado, did so by promising to oppose judicial filibusters; he now seems to have changed his mind after sipping the Beltway's partisan punch.

Perhaps the coming showdown will lead to more political bitterness, but we doubt Democrats will be able to follow through on their pledge to shut down the Senate; the public wants other things done. And who knows? If Democrats can't succeed any longer in legislating through the courts, maybe they'll even return to trying to win power the old-fashioned way, through elections.

A January 2005 Journal editorial also said that a move to change the Senate rules would “restore the Founders' intent when they gave the Senate the responsibility of confirming or rejecting a President's judicial picks. The Constitution requires a simple majority vote and says nothing about a super-majority of 60 being needed to stop a filibuster.” The paper added: “Whether it's nuked or not, the judicial filibuster deserves to be defeated.”

The Journal's current opposition to the rule change further hides the fact that President Obama's nominees have faced a significantly more hostile political environment than any previous administration. While Democrats under President Bush blocked a handful of nominees whom they considered ideologically extreme, Republicans have engaged in an unprecedented effort to obstruct the confirmations of virtually all Obama nominees, including some positions for which they say they will accept no nominee at all. In fact, almost half of all filibusters of presidential nominees in the history of the United States have occurred during Obama's presidency: 

Source: Senate Democrats

The language in this post has been updated for clarity.