Shortly before Thanksgiving, former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next U.S. attorney general collapsed in the face of overwhelming bipartisan opposition. Just hours after the Florida Republican withdrew from consideration, a GOP senator offered Politico a rather blunt prediction.

“Pete’s next,” the senator said, referring to Pete Hegseth’s nomination to lead the Pentagon.

Such talk was not uncommon during the post-election period. In early December, then-Vice President-elect JD Vance reportedly told a member of the presidential transition team, “Pete isn’t 100% dead. But he might be 90% dead.” The same week, Politico published a report that said Hegseth’s nomination appeared to be “on life support” as he confronted “allegations of drunken misbehavior, sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement of the veterans’ nonprofit he once ran.”

Two days earlier, Sen. Lindsey Graham spoke to Capitol Hill journalists on the record and conceded that the allegations surrounding Hegseth were “very disturbing.” The South Carolina Republican said the controversies surrounding Trump’s choice to lead the Defense Department were so serious that they would be “difficult” to overcome.

Seven weeks later, in the narrowest vote ever for a defense secretary nominee, Hegseth was confirmed on 51-50 vote. Three Republicans — Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — voted against him, but that ultimately wasn’t quite enough.

At this point, there’s probably little value in reviewing the myriad of reasons Hegseth’s nomination deserved to be rejected. The scandal-plagued former television personality was so manifestly unqualified that his confirmation is indefensibly ludicrous. While the newly sworn-in secretary denied any wrongdoing, watching the process unfold has been like watching a ridiculous cartoon.

But as the dust settles, it’s worth appreciating how, exactly, a nomination that appeared to be effectively over in December managed to succeed in January. How does an inexperienced and unqualified nominee plagued by many brutal scandals go from “90% dead” to being sworn in for one of the world’s most difficult and important jobs?

I’m reminded of a report The Bulwark published on Dec. 6.

[Member of the Trump transition team] believe that the longer Hegseth remains in contention for the post, the higher his chances of confirmation will be, simply because it subjects GOP senators to a sustained pressure campaign from the MAGA base, and because many will have a hard time scuttling him in a public vote.

In other words, as far as Trump and his team were concerned, Hegseth didn’t need to discredit the scandals so much as he simply had to wait them out. In time, the president and his operation assumed, Senate Republicans would eventually do what they were told to do.

And that is, for all intents and purposes, what happened.

The New York Times published a memorable report on Nov. 20, reminding the political world of the kind of “controversies” that derailed the nominations of several high-profile nominees for important governmental posts in recent decades. “A Supreme Court prospect bowed out after it was revealed that he had smoked pot in his youth,” the article noted. “Two candidates for attorney general were done in when it came to light that they had employed undocumented immigrants as nannies. A third cabinet nominee — a former Senate leader no less — was nixed for not paying taxes on a car and driver lent to him by an associate. Even mean tweets were enough to sink one nominee.”

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The Times added that controversies that were once considered disqualifying for a presidential nominee now seem “downright benign.”

It was not so long ago that nominees for high-level jobs and even some of the more obscure ones had to be above reproach, to the point where a relatively minor tax issue could derail them. But times are evidently changing when it comes to nominations at the dawn of the second Trump administration.

And that’s ultimately the takeaway that lingers for me from the Hegseth nomination fight. It’s not that the laws of political gravity have been fully repealed, but they’ve certainly been tweaked.

There was a time in the recent past in which most Americans could safely assume that senators would never seriously consider someone like Hegseth to lead the Pentagon — if for no other reason than because they cared too much about the United States’ armed forces to put it in the hands of someone obviously ill-suited for the job.

It’s precisely why so many, in both parties, simply assumed in December that Hegseth would fail. It was common sense: In American politics, there are norms and unwritten rules about such things. Senators don’t screw around with our national security. Scandal-plagued nominees don’t advance. Few were shocked when Lindsey Graham said the Hegseth allegations would be “difficult” to overcome because we know — or at least knew — how processes like these work.

And therein lies the point: Politics in Republican circles is different now. It’s worse. It’s unfamiliar. It’s broken.

The sooner Americans come to grips with this unavoidable conclusion, the less shocked we’ll be when 50 GOP senators and a GOP vice president engage in the kind of absurdity the public saw on Friday night.