Disgraced former speaker and continued hanger-on Newt Gingrich, a Deep Thinker by the standards of a party that does not too much trust thinkers or thinking, has the perfect solution for Donald Trump's myriad ethical problems: We need to simply stop having ethics.
“We’ve never seen this kind of wealth in the White House, and so traditional rules don’t work,” Gingrich said Monday during an appearance on NPR’s "The Diane Rehm Show" about the president-elect’s business interests. “We’re going to have to think up a whole new approach.”
This is, truly, the battle cry of the Republican Party. Ethics are something that you charge your opponents with not having while you are Jade Helming up their news feeds, but there is literally nothing a Republican can do that might be considered over the line. Donald Trump is setting himself up to make a tidy sum off his own presidency—in part by letting foreign diplomats know that if they want favors from him, he'll be expecting certain things—and so the new stance from a political party that was positive, absolutely positive that even the appearance of "pay-to-play" was unforgivable in October is now completely reversed.
Mitch McConnell is saying nothing. Paul Ryan is saying nothing. Newt, the Deep Thinker of the party, is explaining why saying nothing is now, truly, the most noble stance.
It is not only Donald's attempts at self-enrichment that ought now be considered the new "ethical" Republican norm. It also goes for his entire team. It goes for anyone he wants to be part of his team. It goes for the laws against nepotism. If the president or anyone acting on behalf of the president does it, it's not illegal:
“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich said. “It’s a totally open power. He could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period. Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”
He does not. But he has something better—a Republican Party nearly uniformly willing to dismiss any such lawbreaking if they are so inclined. And they are so inclined because Republican leaders for the last decade have placed party over country, and personal ambition over constitutional duties, time and time again.
Newt is plainly arguing for authoritarian rule—for a party-driven state that ignores existing law and crafts its own. That very thing is underway in North Carolina right now. It was underway a year ago when Republicans simply refused consent for any Supreme Court pick by the president they opposed, Constitution be damned.
It is anti-democracy, anti-republican, and un-American. And it is resulting in no great argument among powerful Republicans as to whether or not such things should be tolerated; they are unified. They all agree that the prior laws and norms and ethical concerns must be discarded.
So Donald Trump may very well keep his businesses, and unsubtly hint that those that want his favor should slip their cash to his branded hotels. And he will violate nepotism laws simply because he desires it, and Republican leaders will very, very likely instead turn their attention to either ignoring the laws against his behavior or hacking them down so that they no longer stand in his—or their—way.