Remember, it was the GOP who originally proposed the nuclear option way back in the 1970s when Nixon was president, then resurrected in 2005 by the GOP because Democrats were attempting to block specific judicial nominees who had far-right ideologies, and did not have approval by the American Bar Association (a tradition that was broken by the GW Bush administration). The vast majority of nominees by Bush were passed thru without issue.

In the Obama administration, the Senate GOP has attempted to block EVERY nominee put forward by the president, and a large number of judicial, and other non-political administrative seats are still filled by Bush-era holdovers because their replacements have been systematically blocked.