(CNN) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell bluntly warned Democrats on Thursday against weakening the legislative filibuster, an idea that has gained momentum with some presidential candidates and not ruled out by Senate Democratic leaders who backed a similar move six years ago to make it easier to break filibusters of most presidential nominees.

"The legislative filibuster is directly downstream from our founding tradition. If that tradition frustrates the whims of those on the far left, it is their half-baked proposals and not the centuries-old wisdom that need retooling," McConnell wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times

The Kentucky Republican argued that "strong minority rights have always been the Senate's distinguishing feature" and reminded Democrats that when they used the "nuclear option" in 2013 to lower the supermajority threshold to break a filibuster for nominees, he had cautioned they would soon wish they hadn't.

"You'll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think," McConnell wrote at the top of his commentary, quoting his own admonishment to Democrats as then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, forced through that rules change.

Soon after, Republicans took control of the Senate and President Donald Trump won the White House. McConnell then made full use of the rules change he had decried to confirm scores of district and appeals court judges . He also employed the nuclear option again, this time to lower the filibuster threshold for Supreme Court nominees, allowing him to install Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the high court, confirmations that would have been unlikely under the old rules.

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