Gaetz for AG? Sure. GOP should give Trump whatever he wants.

In a potential blow to the “Donald Trump is NOT a fascist!” crowd, the president-elect has made a fascist-adjacent demand: He wants to install government officials without Senate approval.
You may have heard Trump promoting “recess appointments” lately. That provision allows the president to fill important government vacancies when Congress is not in session. It’s essentially meant for emergency situations, not for an incoming president who wants to bypass checks on who he picks to run key parts of the federal government.
It’s easy to see why Trump wants to do this, since many of his Cabinet choices thus far reside somewhere between comical and patently absurd. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a conspiracy theorist, anti-vaccine polio-enthusiast and road-kill-eating nut-bird – as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Noted dog-gunner Kristi Noem for Homeland Security. Matt Gaetz, an ethically challenged forehead that became a real boy, for attorney general. A Fox News host with big biceps and problematic tattoos to head up the Department of Defense.
Most of them couldn’t get hired as your local dogcatcher – except maybe South Dakota Gov. Noem if she lived in a town run by cats – so Trump’s desire to dodge a confirmation process that would pull the curtain back on this parade of nincompoops is understandable.
But using recess appointments to stock an administration is not at all what the Founding Fathers intended. 
Noted non-liberal Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in 2014 that recess appointments are “essentially an historic relic, something whose original purpose has disappeared,” noting: “The need it was designed to fill no longer exists, and its only remaining use is the ignoble one of enabling the President to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process.”
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Alexander Hamilton – you know, the guy from the musical – wrote why Senate confirmation of presidential appointments is crucial to democracy, concluding that with this process the president “would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”
If Trump had his way, all Republicans would be required to get a neck tattoo that reads: “Obsequious Instruments of His Pleasure.” 
This is why I think, against all common sense and despite loud warnings from anyone who understands democracy, GOP lawmakers should go ahead and give Trump his recess appointments. Don’t bother the poor man with things he hates, like “norms” and “standards” and “the Constitution.”
The china shop may belong to all of us, but Republicans are the ones who just released the bull. I say let him rip.
Because when Trump appoints an on-fire Tesla to head up the Department of Transportation, I want the Republican Party to own it.
When the current wife of a five-times-divorced ex-con Trump used to go to strip clubs with is named secretary of the Treasury, I think the GOP should have to defend that and the looting that will inevitably arise. (No, I don’t know who that person would be, but I’m sure she’s out there.)
When the Department of Agriculture is headed up by none other than the late, great Dr. Hannibal Lecter, I want congressional Republicans forced to embrace the fiction.
Trump is what they and a majority of American voters wanted. So Trump should be exactly what they, and all of us, get. Not “Trump, but with his authoritarian tendencies curbed by others.” Not “Trump, but with his god-awful judgment aided by smarter people in the room.”
Just Trump. Pure and uncut.
That’s what makes people like Gaetz so perfect for his administration. Gaetz is a man even Republicans dislike and distrust, which is remarkable given the party’s current subterranean standards.
The Florida congressman resigned this week, days before an ethics investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use was set to be released.
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But if Trump wants to make a wildly unqualified and uniquely dislikable oaf like Gaetz our attorney general via recess appointment, I hope Republicans let him do it. You all punched your tickets for this ride, don’t chicken out right when it’s time to board.
Now, don’t get me wrong, as disgusted as I am by Trump’s return to the White House, I still love the country enough to hope things turn out well. I mean that. I’m not rooting against us. I just want Republicans fully responsible for whatever comes next.
If Trump taps a burning oil rig to head the Department of Energy, I hope it does the best job any burning oil rig could ever do.
If Noem keeps the homeland safe and doesn’t shoot any additional dogs, I’ll be the first to applaud.
If Fox News host Pete Hegseth, whose arm tattoos were recently described as “a veritable checklist of today’s Christian nationalist folklore,” leads the Defense Department with honor and character, I will be nothing but glad.
But if things don’t go well with Trump’s bizarro-world governmental leadership picks, I won’t be surprised. That’s why I’m all in on recess appointments. Let Trump be Trump. You wanted him. Enjoy it.
And when someone like Gaetz does something stupid, which he will, or something illegal, which he might, the responsibility for the farce will be right where it should be: in the laps of lapdog Republicans.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk