Nothing focuses the mind, the expression goes, like the sight of the gallows. And so it is for beaten and battered Senate Republicans when it comes to the use of the filibuster to block the judicial nominees of President Barack Obama. After years of insisting President Bush's picks for the bench deserved an "up or down vote," Arizona Senator Jon Kyl and his allies in the GOP minority are now threatening to turn to the judicial filibuster. Of course, after two consecutive election day drubbings and a record-setting term of obstruction in Congress, the Republicans' deathbed conversion comes as no surprise.

Addressing the conservative Federalist Society last week, Senator Kyl fired the first salvo in the coming battle for the future of the judiciary. Regurgitating tried and untrue Republican talking points about so-called "judicial activism," Kyl warned his audience that he would filibuster Supreme Court nominees he deemed too liberal:

Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

If that seems like a 180 degree turnabout for the junior Senator from Arizona, that's because it is.

Back in 2005, Kyl was at the forefront of then-majority Senate Republicans threatening Democrats with the "nuclear option" rule change to bar future judicial filibusters of Bush appointees. At a November 28, 2005 campaign event for Kyl, President Bush praised his ally's fight to block the filibuster:

"I can't thank Jon Kyl enough for making sure the judges I nominate get a fair hearing and an up or down vote on the floor of the United States Senate."

When now-Justice Samuel Alito came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, Kyl as usual parroted the trusted GOP sound bite:

"I look forward to a dignified hearing followed by a fair up-or-down vote on the Senate floor."

Alas, that was then and this is now. After receiving what President Bush called a "thumping" in the 2006 mid-terms, the Republicans lost their Senate majority. And now, "the Decider" when it comes to Supreme Court nominations will be Democrat Barack Obama.

Earlier this year, that prospect moved the band of hypocrites at the Weekly Standard to praise John McCain for his role in preserving the judicial filibuster. While the Standard's Dean Barnett previously bemoaned McCain's "uncanny ability to drive virtually all conservatives nuts," Adam White and Kevin White in January lauded McCain's leadership in the "Gang of 14" that saved the judicial filibuster. Not because McCain's position on the so-called "nuclear option" was right in principle, of course, but because it preserved the ability of a Republican minority to block future Democratic judicial nominations:

Finally, it must be noted that McCain's opposition to the nuclear option did not merely serve short-term conservative interests in the specific context of Bush's nominations; rather, it served long-term conservative interests in the federal bench generally. As McCain has warned, there will come a day--perhaps soon--when a Democratic president will nominate decidedly non-conservative justices and judges, and a Democratic Senate majority will want desperately to confirm them. When that moment arrives, conservatives will call on the Republican minority to utilize every tool in the Senate minority playbook to thwart those nominations--especially the filibuster...preservation of the filibuster threat may ultimately prevent the ascent of Supreme Court judges that Laura Ingraham and Rick Santorum would dearly regret.

Of course, the "up or down vote" talking point long ago disappeared from the vocabulary of the Senate GOP. The minority "roadblock Republicans" of the 110th Congress easily set the record for blocking legislation via the filibuster.

As Robert Borosage detailed, while Democrats in the House kept their promise to pass a raft of bills including Medicare drug negotiation, the minimum wage, student loan reform and more, Republicans in the Senate stymied overwhelmingly popular bills at every turn:

"Bills with majority support -- raising the minimum wage, ethics reform, a date to remove troops from Iraq, revoking oil subsidies and putting the money into renewable energy, fulfilling the 9/11 commission recommendations on homeland security--get blocked because they can't garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster."

Former Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) was one of the essential architects of the filibuster fever in the Grand Obstruction Party. While Lott decried that "the Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before" and "all modicum of courtesy is going out the window," Lott was also brutally frank in 2007 about his strategy to prevent any Democratic wins come hell or high water:

"The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it's working for us."

As John McCain's junior partner in Arizona Jon Kyl made clear, that same strategy will be in place for President Obama when the time for judicial confirmations comes. As for the defeated and disheartened right-wing bloggers who once called the Gang of 14 "disappointing", "a nightmare" and "a bunch of m-fing cowards," they'll be just fine with that.

UPDATE: As a reader rightly noted by email, the GOP's unsurprising pledge of obstructionism makes the outcomes in the Alaska, Minnesota and Georgia Senate races all the more important.