MR Political Roundup - 2006-03-15
Polls show a huge jump for Kadima:
An opinion poll released on Tuesday night showed that if elections were held this week, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party would win 42 seats, a rise of some five seats over surveys released at the end of last week... The Channel One poll released on Tuesday showed the Labor Party winning 16 seats and the Likud 15... Avigdor Lieberman's Russian immigrant-based Yisrael Beiteinu gained 10 seats in the poll. The joint list of the National Union and the National Religious Party won nine, as did the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas faction.
Unless we miss our count, that's 85 potential mandates for a center-right coalition. Obviously, that coalition would never take form - there's no reason to juggle principled opposition to West Bank withdrawals from religious Zionists (read: loud and public interviews) with social allocations for the poor from Shas (read: demands for outright bribery). We also have serious doubts about Olmert allowing Netanyahu to be anything but the head of the Opposition.
The cocktail party conventional buzz is all about the unprecedented number of undecideds still up for grabs. We think that a good number of those are college students deciding between Kadima and the Green Leaf party, but Ha'aretz seems to think those votes are available for Labor (or, they grudgingly admit, for the Likud). Then again, we're still waiting for the "youth revolution" that Ha'aretz promised us Peretz would bring - but if you're a fan of these kinds of articles there's the link.
Labor
At this point, we'd guess that Olmert would be most comfortable throwing money at whatever Labor and Shas want him to throw money at in exchange for their support on his diplomatic plan. The problem with that scenario is that Peretz is staking out a firm position against unilateral withdrawals - he wants Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian partners for peace. Of course, after Labor gets crushed in the election, Peretz might be forced to resign and all his pre-election posturing will be moot anyway:
While the party chairman is talking about his plans as prime minister, senior Labor officials are coming to grips with decisions in a realtity (sic) in which the party will not be forming the new government after the March 28 election. Their talk is turning to coalitions and ministerial candidates. The assumption is that if Labor receives fewer than 22 seats - the number of Labor and One Nation MKs in the outgoing Knesset - the party will face a major internal crisis that could unseat Peretz.
Here is where we'd usually gloat by contrasting Ha'aretz's euphoria over Peretz with our theory that Labor primary voters drink paint. But this post is already a little longer than we'd like it to be and besides, there'll be plenty of time for that after the election. In the meantime, feel free to sate yourselves on a lede from this morning's YNet:
Senior party members call on change in strategy, say Labor should declare its intentions to back Kadima as second-place party; "Peretz not perceived as prime minister, it's not his fault," says party source
Of course it's not. It's obviously the fault of the Hebrew language, which has failed to make "prime minister" and "corrupt, backstabbing union thug" into synonyms.
Likud
When Tzachi Hanegbi left the Likud for Kadima, we despaired of finding any more crooks in the Likud ranks. Luckily, MK Naomi Blumenthal came to our rescue:
Likud chair Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned MK Naomi Blumenthal on Tuesday afternoon and asked her for the second time to suspend herself from the party's slate of candidates for Knesset. Blumenthal again refused. Netanyahu made the first phone call after Blumenthal's conviction, at the height of his efforts to "clean up" the Likud ranks. But Blumenthal, No. 18 on the Likud list,... has an agenda of her own, which does not match the Netanyahu and Likud agenda for the election campaign.
Current polling indicates that at #18 she won't get into the next Knesset anyway, but we suppose that Netanyahu has a valid symbolic point to make.
Kadima
Ha'aretz has a take on Olmert's Sharon-esque image strategy, and they drop the bombshell that it might have something to do with the fact that Sharon's advisers are running Olmert's campaign. If you don't want to read it, here's the synopsis: arresting terrorists made Olmert look strong and is likely to reassure voters who were unsettled by his promise to withdraw more settlers from the West Bank. We've just saved you a minute and a half of your life. You're welcome.
Incidentally, the prize for Most Idiotic Political Commentary on the Jericho Raid goes to Ofer Shelah for writing that "Olmert took no particular risk by going to Jericho". When you're more jaded and skeptical of Olmert than an election-frenzied Ha'aretz correspondent ("Olmert did not seek out or initiate this operation, and he would have passed on it had he been given the chance... it was too dangerous"), it's well past time to ask yourself if you're trying a wee bit too hard to play the cynical Israeli.
An opinion poll released on Tuesday night showed that if elections were held this week, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party would win 42 seats, a rise of some five seats over surveys released at the end of last week... The Channel One poll released on Tuesday showed the Labor Party winning 16 seats and the Likud 15... Avigdor Lieberman's Russian immigrant-based Yisrael Beiteinu gained 10 seats in the poll. The joint list of the National Union and the National Religious Party won nine, as did the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas faction.
Unless we miss our count, that's 85 potential mandates for a center-right coalition. Obviously, that coalition would never take form - there's no reason to juggle principled opposition to West Bank withdrawals from religious Zionists (read: loud and public interviews) with social allocations for the poor from Shas (read: demands for outright bribery). We also have serious doubts about Olmert allowing Netanyahu to be anything but the head of the Opposition.
The cocktail party conventional buzz is all about the unprecedented number of undecideds still up for grabs. We think that a good number of those are college students deciding between Kadima and the Green Leaf party, but Ha'aretz seems to think those votes are available for Labor (or, they grudgingly admit, for the Likud). Then again, we're still waiting for the "youth revolution" that Ha'aretz promised us Peretz would bring - but if you're a fan of these kinds of articles there's the link.
Labor
At this point, we'd guess that Olmert would be most comfortable throwing money at whatever Labor and Shas want him to throw money at in exchange for their support on his diplomatic plan. The problem with that scenario is that Peretz is staking out a firm position against unilateral withdrawals - he wants Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian partners for peace. Of course, after Labor gets crushed in the election, Peretz might be forced to resign and all his pre-election posturing will be moot anyway:
While the party chairman is talking about his plans as prime minister, senior Labor officials are coming to grips with decisions in a realtity (sic) in which the party will not be forming the new government after the March 28 election. Their talk is turning to coalitions and ministerial candidates. The assumption is that if Labor receives fewer than 22 seats - the number of Labor and One Nation MKs in the outgoing Knesset - the party will face a major internal crisis that could unseat Peretz.
Here is where we'd usually gloat by contrasting Ha'aretz's euphoria over Peretz with our theory that Labor primary voters drink paint. But this post is already a little longer than we'd like it to be and besides, there'll be plenty of time for that after the election. In the meantime, feel free to sate yourselves on a lede from this morning's YNet:
Senior party members call on change in strategy, say Labor should declare its intentions to back Kadima as second-place party; "Peretz not perceived as prime minister, it's not his fault," says party source
Of course it's not. It's obviously the fault of the Hebrew language, which has failed to make "prime minister" and "corrupt, backstabbing union thug" into synonyms.
Likud
When Tzachi Hanegbi left the Likud for Kadima, we despaired of finding any more crooks in the Likud ranks. Luckily, MK Naomi Blumenthal came to our rescue:
Likud chair Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned MK Naomi Blumenthal on Tuesday afternoon and asked her for the second time to suspend herself from the party's slate of candidates for Knesset. Blumenthal again refused. Netanyahu made the first phone call after Blumenthal's conviction, at the height of his efforts to "clean up" the Likud ranks. But Blumenthal, No. 18 on the Likud list,... has an agenda of her own, which does not match the Netanyahu and Likud agenda for the election campaign.
Current polling indicates that at #18 she won't get into the next Knesset anyway, but we suppose that Netanyahu has a valid symbolic point to make.
Kadima
Ha'aretz has a take on Olmert's Sharon-esque image strategy, and they drop the bombshell that it might have something to do with the fact that Sharon's advisers are running Olmert's campaign. If you don't want to read it, here's the synopsis: arresting terrorists made Olmert look strong and is likely to reassure voters who were unsettled by his promise to withdraw more settlers from the West Bank. We've just saved you a minute and a half of your life. You're welcome.
Incidentally, the prize for Most Idiotic Political Commentary on the Jericho Raid goes to Ofer Shelah for writing that "Olmert took no particular risk by going to Jericho". When you're more jaded and skeptical of Olmert than an election-frenzied Ha'aretz correspondent ("Olmert did not seek out or initiate this operation, and he would have passed on it had he been given the chance... it was too dangerous"), it's well past time to ask yourself if you're trying a wee bit too hard to play the cynical Israeli.
