Politics, like life, is full of trade-offs. As Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reminded us long ago, You Can't Always Get What You Want. But in politics as in life, sometimes you can get what you want, particularly if you're in a superior bargaining position.

Arlen Specter apparently got what he wanted from Harry Reid: retention of the seniority he earned while serving on Senate committees as a Republican. In exchange, Reid got what he wanted: a new Democrat. Win-win? Not for Democrats who might get bumped by Specter's seniority.

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The last vacancy in President Obama's cabinet has been filled. By a 65-31 vote, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Republicans had delayed a vote because of concerns about Ms. Sebelius’s record on abortion as governor of Kansas for the last six years. In addition, some Republicans complained that she and the administration intended to ration health care using the results of research comparing the effectiveness of different drugs and other treatments.

The swine flu scare, according to Mark Warner, prompted the Senate to vote.

Kos has the details. President Obama welcomes him with open arms:

[T]he president reached Specter to express his thrill at having him in the party and to offer his full support. According to a White House aide, the president found out about the switch at 10:25 AM while in the Oval Office receiving his Economic Daily Briefing.

The president was handed a note, the aide said, that read: "Specter is announcing he is changing parties." Seven minutes later, President Obama reached Specter to tell him, according to the aide, "You have my full support" and that we are "thrilled to have you."

My own theory is that President Obama is being entirely too modest. I find it hard to believe that President Obama was not an integral part of wooing Specter to the Democratic Party. I think this may be one of the most important achievements President Obama has yet had. He is denying involvement in the process, but I am giving him a lion's share of the credit for it.

Speaking for me only

High Broderism works its "magic:"

Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not."

The Republicans essentially succeeded. The Senate version of the stimulus plan included no money whatsoever for pandemic preparedness. In the conference committee that reconciled the House and Senate plans, Obey and his allies succeeded in securing $50 million for improving information systems at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But state and local governments, and the emergency services that would necessarily be on the frontlines in any effort to contain a pandemic, got nothing.

When policy does not matter, when High Broderism reigns supreme, this is the result.

Speaking for me only

CQ's Jeff Stein continues to be the vehicle for the Republican attacks on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA). Now Politico's Glenn Thrush joins the GOP team:

Many Republicans obliged, led by former CIA chief Porter Goss, who is accusing Democrats like Pelosi of “amnesia” for demanding investigations in 2009 after failing to raise objections seven years ago when she first learned of the legal basis for the program.

There is the line of attack on Pelosi, who is not afraid of the truth -- she is calling for a Truth Commission. But getting Pelosi is not enough. Jane Harman, who objected to torture at the time, also needs to be smeared. And CQ's Jeff Stein is the vehicle for it. More . . .

Via Lambert, Philip Heymann inadvertently makes an argument for a special prosecutor regarding torture:

“When you get one administration prosecuting its predecessor, you start creating the conditions of a banana republic,” said Philip Heymann, a law professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who served as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton. “Every Republican in the country would think this was a dangerous attack on the two-party system.”

This is an argument for a special prosecutor, not against prosecutions.

Speaking for me only

Devilstower, a great writer, pens a quite misguided piece about the tea parties, ascribing much more potential to it than it deserves. In particular, Devilstower is wrong to separate it from the Republican Party. Devilstower writes:

This wasn't a tax protest or a conservative movement, it was the semi-regular Gathering of the Disaffected. . . . Like the folks who backed Perot, the baggies are not Republicans. . . . What started on April 15th might actually be the beginning of a movement. And just because third parties haven't be successful in the last 150 years is no guarantee that they'll continue to be unsuccessful for the next 150, or even the next five. One of these days, candidates with letters other then (D) and (R) after their names will take their seats in Congress. One of these days we'll have a president from some party you've never heard of.

This strikes me as completely wrong. [More...]

Conservative pollster Scott Rasmussen writes:

The secession question was prompted by "tea parties" nationwide on April 15 to express frustration about the high level of new federal government spending. But President Obama has maintained solid approval ratings over the past month in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Yes, the main Tea Party message turned out to be about secession. In case you were wondering, 70% of Texans are not as idiotic as their Governor - they know that Texas does not have a right to secede.

Speaking for me only

I consciously avoided denigrating the Tea Parties before because I thought the message, muddled as it was, as wrong as it was and as hypocritical as it was coming from Bush deadenders, it was a legitimate expression of a point of view. Texas Governor Rick Perry's secession threat changes that. Consider the comments thread of this eminently sensible post from Allah Pundit:

The Family Guy rules our world. Inspired by Petoria, Texas Governor Rick Perry threatens secession:

[A]nswering news reporters' questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said he sees no reason why Texas should do that. "There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. . . .

What an embarrassment.

Speaking for me only

Paul Krugman writes:

This is a column about Republicans — and I’m not sure I should even be writing it. Today’s G.O.P. is, after all, very much a minority party. It retains some limited ability to obstruct the Democrats, but has no ability to make or even significantly shape policy. Beyond that, Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats.

(Emphasis supplied.) No need to go further. I would add just one point - the most important political debate going on right now is the POLICY debate about the economy and the financial crisis. How the economy goes and how the financial crisis plays out will determine the political fate of Democratic control of Washington. Not tea parties or what David Broder thinks.

Speaking for me only

Nate Silver writes:

A more robust interpretation/criticism of Obama's "bipartisan" positioning is that he is playing a game he knows he can't lose. . . as [Mark] Schmitt suggested more than a year ago, Obama may have known full well that Republicans weren't about to seek compromise, nor would it necessarily have been politically advantageous for them to do so. If partisan squabbling is inevitable, it is useful to have pre-positioned oneself in advance as its victim rather than its instigator.

. . . What I don't think Obama can be accused of, however, is breaking any promises. . .

That pretty clearly is false with regard to policy (if not "politics" which is what Silver is talking about.) To back my assertions, let me cite . . . Nate Silver: