Two schools of thought on the Senate's power of advice and consent on Supreme Court nominees: One -- which I support, but then-Sen. Barack Obama did not -- holds that barring extraordinary circumstances, senators should go along with a president's judicial choices.

When Senate Democrats were using the filibuster to torpedo confirmation votes of 10 of President George W. Bush's judicial nominees, the GOP leadership threatened to bar its use to kill a judicial confirmation vote. Until 14 senators -- seven Democrats and seven Republicans, dubbed the Gang of 14 -- struck a deal in 2005 that resulted in five judicial confirmations and defanged the threat of using a rules change to end the judicial filibuster.

Extremism did not prevail because seven Dems pledged to reserve the judicial filibuster for extraordinary circumstances, while seven Republicans rejected the nuclear option of permanently eliminating it.

Then-Sen. Obama chose not to join the Gang of 14, even though he acknowledged in his memoir "The Audacity of Hope," that because of the 14, a "crisis in the Senate was averted." You see, Obama supported the filibuster of Bush nominees: "Because federal judges receive lifetime appointments and often serve through the terms of multiple presidents, it behooves a president -- and benefits our democracy -- to find moderate nominees who can garner some measure of bipartisan support."

Furthermore, Obama's idea of moderate clashed with those of the 78 senators who voted to confirm Chief Justice John G. Roberts and the 58 senators who confirmed Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Continued...