Eliza Collins

USA TODAY

If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., uses the "nuclear option" to get President Trump's Supreme Court nominee confirmed, the controversial rules change would likely send Democrats into an uproar. But if history is any indication, your view on the “nuclear option” really just depends on whether your party is in the majority or minority in Congress at the time.

The “nuclear option” would be a rules change that would do away with the filibuster for a Supreme Court pick, requiring only a simple majority to confirm nominees, instead of the agreement of 60 senators that is usually required to bring any matter to the Senate floor. That would allow the Senate's 52 Republicans to place the Neil Gorsuch on the bench without a single Democratic vote. Democrats would howl about the injustice but would be powerless to stop it.

It is a dramatic change in Senate tradition, and one that both parties warn could have dramatic and long-lasting consequences.

Let's look at how this fight has played out in the past:

Back in 2005:

In 2005, Senate Democrats had filibustered some of then-president George W. Bush’s nominees and Republicans who controlled the Senate were sick of it. McConnell, who at the time was majority whip, said that the GOP was prepared to invoke the “nuclear option.”

"The majority in the Senate is prepared to restore the Senate’s traditions and precedents to ensure that regardless of party, any president’s judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent,” McConnell said to his colleagues.

Then-Senate minority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was not happy.

"Right now, the only check on President Bush is the Democrats' ability to voice our concern in this body,” Reid said in 2005, according to CNN. "If Republicans roll back our rights in this chamber, there will be no check on this power."

Republicans did not end up using the option after a bipartisan group of Senators came up with an alternative plan to approve some Bush nominees. But the conversation set the stage for future debates.

Then in 2013:

Democrats were in charge of the Senate, and it was their turn to be frustrated with Republican pushback against some of President Obama’s nominees for the lower courts.

So Reid decided it was time to go nuclear. He employed the option so that Obama’s judicial and executive branch nominees wouldn’t have to clear the 60-vote threshold to be nominated. The move made it so that nominees — other than the Supreme Court — can be confirmed with a simple majority moving forward.

McConnell told reporters that Democrats “just broke the Senate rules in order to exercise the power grab.”

“It's a sad day in the history of the Senate,” McConnell added.

Today:

McConnell is less sad about the “nuclear option” — although he still isn’t singing its praises. He has said it’s “way too early” to talk about ending the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. But he also said it’s Democrats' fault that the nuclear option is even on the table: “My answer’s going to be ... [Democrats] have set the standard. They have set it. My counterpart actually invented where we are now. And all we can do is send up a great nominee,” McConnell said to Politico last week.

President Trump has no problem if McConnell chooses to change the rules.

"I would say, it's up to Mitch, but I would say 'go for it,' " Trump told reporters Wednesday.

Read more on the Gorsuch nomination:

• Neil Gorsuch: The case for and against Trump's Supreme Court nominee

​• Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch's key cases: In his own words

• Neil Gorsuch: Stellar résumé and Scalia-like legal philosophy

• Analysis: Neil Gorsuch could lead Supreme Court to a new conservative era

• Senate Democrats express skepticism of Gorsuch

• Why Trump chose Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee

• Why 'cloture' and 'nuclear option' are keys to Trump's Supreme Court pick

• Who is Neil Gorsuch? 5 things to know about Trump's nominee