Livni roundup

The Jerusalem Post reports that Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni won the Kadima primary by a narrow margin:

Livni clinched Wednesday night’s Kadima primary by a mere 431 votes, winning 43.1 percent (16,936 votes) while Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz won 42% (16,535 votes). Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit won 6.5% and 8.5% respectively.

(via memeorandum)

Remember that Mofaz thought that he had a pretty good chance based on his internal polling. It turns out that he was right as this was much closer than news organizations projected. Livni’s demand to keep the polls open looks even worse, given this narrow margin of victory.

The Hashmonean is disgusted.

Where does Kadima go from here? Our PM refuses to vacate, his replacement is coronated like a queen, negotiations & concessions steam forward with no mandate, now not once but a second time it seems, state affairs are not dealt with.. We are ruled it seems like a brothel – By a bunch of greedy corrupt prostitutes and their media pimps. Now Shas & Labor have seemingly even dropped their pre-requisites for remaining in the coalition, meaning nothing has changed at all.

Now that it is proven Livni is far from a winner the left’s GoldenGirl clearly cannot deliver, and the last thing that can be allowed is elections to drive this failure reality home.

Shmuel Rosner keeps alive the Ms. Clean reputation without focusing too much on the poll shenanigans:

And this will also be a very limited coalition. With barely 60 members of Knesset in her camp-half the parliament-every politician will be king. Livni, the Ms. Clean of Israeli politics, will have to cave time and again to all kinds of demands and pressures as not to lose the coalition. It can’t last for very long-and it’s not clear if Livni wants to take this path. Bottom line: as Shas goes, so goes the coalition.

Israel Matzav notes a historical parallel:

The news stories had been written, the champagne was on ice and then tourism minister Uzi Baram had just finished thanking the Arab voters for putting his candidate over the top when the candidate’s world came crashing to an end: Despite exit polls that had him winning by a wide margin over the challenger, Shimon Peres suddenly found that the actual vote count was giving the victory to his bitter rival: Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. The polls had lied – or the people had lied to the pollsters. Is it happening again tonight?

In 1996, though, if you counted the projected seats for each party in the Knesset based on the polls, you’d have realized that Netanyahu probably would narrowly win.

Dion Nissenbaum focused on trivia notes that Livni is a vegetarian.

The NYT has some biting criticism from the Likud:

She has also said she would try to attract Likud. But Mr. Netanyahu, the Likud leader, said on Wednesday that joining Kadima in a government would be tantamount to joining the board of Lehman Brothers.

He has argued that Kadima, formed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in late 2005 less than two months before he fell into a stroke-induced coma, has no future because it lacks vision, identity and popular support.

Other Likud leaders said it was scandalous that a primary election of a small party like Kadima — 70,000 members were eligible to vote and about half did so — could determine the country’s next prime minister and policy direction.

Gilad Erdan, a Parliament member from Likud, said on television that the roughly 20,000 people who elected the head of Kadima could barely fill a soccer stadium, and added: “I have no doubt that a new government would be legal, but it would not be morally legitimate. This is not the government the people have elected; this is not the agenda that was put up to elections.”

In the link to its election story the Washington Post had this teaser:

Tzipi Livni handily wins the leadership of the main party in Israel’s governing coalition, exit polls show, giving her the chance to become Israel’s first female prime minister in more than three decades.

So how’d they correct that?

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Wednesday narrowly won the leadership of the main party in Israel’s governing coalition, exit polls showed, giving her the chance to become Israel’s first female prime minister in more than three decades.

Whoops. The narrow victory was known after the ballots had been counted! They only changed the result “handily” to “narrowly” but missed the reason for the change in result.

The Post tries to build her up:

In meetings and public appearances, Livni can come off as cold and detached, though friends say her unsmiling persona may in part reflect an effort to allay concerns that, as a woman in a political culture dominated by men, she is not strong enough to defend Israel militarily or go toe-to-toe with Palestinian negotiators.

“The fact that I’m a woman doesn’t make me a weak leader,” Livni told the Jerusalem Post last week. “I have no problem pulling the trigger when necessary.”

and

Her critics have long scoffed that Livni, a strict vegetarian out of concern for animal rights, does not have the requisite cunning to succeed in the often cutthroat world of Israeli politics. Many felt she had missed her chance at the prime ministership last year, when anger over Olmert’s handling of the Second Lebanon War was at its height and Livni could have forced his hand by quitting the cabinet. Instead, she stayed in office, and Olmert’s government survived for another year.

Among Palestinian leaders, Livni has won credibility and some respect for the seriousness with which she has pursued negotiations; she has been meeting chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei twice a week for secret talks since the U.S.-backed Annapolis peace process began last November. “They are talking substance. They have a healthy relationship,” said Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.

Of course to Baskin “talking substance” means “giving away territory without getting anything hin return.” That isn’t how the Post would want to portray her. And, of course, nothing about the crowning achievement of her tenure as Foreign Minister: UN Resolution 1701. The less said about that the better.

My Right Word contrasts the media coverage of the Israeli election with that of the American election. I have to disagree. The media in America is actively pulling for Obama. And it’s not my isolated impression.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.