Hearings are now underway in the Senate on Donald Trump's various nominees to fill out his administration, but so far it has all felt like it is leading to a very foregone conclusion. American politics has gotten so tribal that Republicans are now willing to overlook just about anything for one of their own, no matter how deeply disqualifying such things would have been in the past. Trump will quite likely get almost all his picks confirmed, no matter what disturbing things exist in their past.

This is more than a little bit depressing, but it is the end result of the Republican Party being remade into a cult of personality with a very flawed Dear Leader at the top. Since Trump has gotten away with so many things himself, how can Republicans say any of it is disqualifying in his choices for his administration? The Republican Party has become completely amoral -- there is no moral line in the sand they are not willing to cross, these days. At least, that's the way it seems, after watching some of the confirmation hearings. If Trump did it (or worse) then how can GOP senators say it is a disqualification for holding office? That's the only moral yardstick (such as it is) that exists for them, anymore. As a measure of how much things have changed in the GOP, just imagine for a moment what John McCain would have had to say about some of the military and national security nominees Trump has come up with. But mavericks like McCain are (for the most part) either gone or have been cowed into silence by the threat of the MAGA crowds backing a primary challenger.

Of course, with any of these appointees the big question is going to become how long they'll actually last. Trump's first term was full of replacing people on his team because he got annoyed at them for one reason or another. The second term is quite likely to be similar, even if he is largely choosing his team based on one quality above all else: their personal loyalty to him. But that's not going to matter for much if something bad happens which Trump has to deflect the blame for -- firing a cabinet member is always going to be easier than Trump taking the blame for anything, after all.

I read an article this week where conservative commentators were already making odds on how long Marco Rubio will last as secretary of State, in fact (the consensus seemed to be even odds he'd last his whole first year). Rubio will face a problematic tenure, since his own foreign policy views used to be quite different from Trump's, and because there will be others in sort of "minister without portfolio" positions who will be in charge of different segments of Trump's foreign policy. Rubio won't have any control over any of them (the thinking goes), so he is bound to become ensnared in conflict with one or more of them within the first year or so.

This may be true, but Rubio (more than most GOP senators -- with the sole exception being Lindsey Graham, who used to be McCain's maverick sidekick) has completely remade his entire political persona into that of a MAGA faithful, so he'll probably take a whole lot of abuse from Trump before deciding it's time to leave (remember watching Jeff Sessions snivel and prostrate himself before Trump?). But there are other Trump nominees who might also chafe at Trump's way of running things eventually as well.

What really remains to be seen are two questions. The first is how much Trump will actually follow through on all those sweeping campaign promises he made. The second is how much of this he won't even have to follow through on, because his lieutenants will carry out his pledges without him even being involved. His attorney general pick seems eager to get out there and weaponize the Justice Department so it essentially becomes Donald Trump's personal legal team. And she's not the only one.

Trump will be happy taking the credit for anything his team does, whether he specifically instructed them to do it or whether they did it on their own initiative based on his campaign promises. If the end result is a good one (as far as Trump is concerned) then he will tell the world that of course it was his idea in the first place.

If anything bad happens -- if one of his minions does something that blows up in Trump's face, in other words -- then Trump will quickly disavow the person and heap all the blame upon them. This will likely be the real limit in terms of how long members of his team get to serve. Trump did fire a number of his appointees in his first term, and he can be expected to do the same in his second as well. This won't even be limited to his top advisors -- Trump will fire anyone at any level if doing so is the easiest way to deflect blame.

With so many appointees lacking basic qualifications for the jobs they've been named to, there will likely be a whole lot of ineffectiveness and incompetence in a whole lot of departments. People who haven't ever run any type of large organization may get so overwhelmed by it all that they spend all their time learning the ropes, which will limit what they can achieve. Screwups are almost bound to happen, as well. In the past, this has been the whole point of Senate hearings and the whole "advise and consent" concept -- people who were woefully unqualified would be rejected by members of the incoming president's own party, as the senators showed their independence and flexed their own Washington power. But with a cult of personality rather than a normal political party, this guardrail doesn't even seem to exist anymore.

Perhaps the worst of the nominees won't make it. Perhaps there will be four Republicans who balk at putting the reins of power in the hands of people who simply should not be put into such positions of responsibility. But it's doubtful (and has been all along) that more than one or two of Trump's picks is even going to be in jeopardy. The rest of them will be confirmed, and perhaps go on to fail spectacularly at the jobs they've been given.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant