Sharon's narrow non-victory explained
Although Ariel Sharon may have in this particular case scored a narrow victory in the time he'd rather the party primaries be held, that doesn't mean it's good news for him, as One Jerusalem explains:
On a related note: as the grandson of Zeev Jabotinsky said on television about Sharon's microphone suffering failures, it's quite possible that he arranged that himself, as a kind of publicity stunt. And I have to concur, that indeed it is possible.
Imagine if President George W. Bush won a contest over a procedural motion in the Republican National Committee by 2% of the vote. Would that be considered a victory by Bush or a rebuke?Good points. And must I for one point out that given his age (about 77 years old today), and the mistakes that countries like France have made in past years, by running candidates who were more or less very old (Jaques Chirac is one example), rather than seek out new ones with fresh and inspiring ideas to offer, that's why politically, it'd be doing them a lot more harm than good to be supporting Sharon as a prime ministerial candidate for the Likud party.
The press headlines would proclaim the beginning of the end for Bush. They would (correctly) point out that as leader of the Party and President of the United States he should have won with 90% or more of the vote.
Keep this in mind when you try to understand the vote that took place in the Likud Central Committee today. Prime Minister Sharon won a procedural vote by a mere 102 votes. A fraction less than half of his party's committee went against their own selfish interests of staying in power to vote against him. This "victory" was as much a rebuke as the day his Likud voted against him on the issue of disengagement.
That is why Sharon did not appear at his "victory party", tonight.
He knows he survived by the skin of his teeth because a slim majority of the Central Committee put loyalty to their chairman before their opposition to future withdrawals.
One Left-wing Israeli analysis concluded that Sharon's victory is in fact a nightmare for him. He has a severely divided party that will probably throw him out in a head to head primary.
On a related note: as the grandson of Zeev Jabotinsky said on television about Sharon's microphone suffering failures, it's quite possible that he arranged that himself, as a kind of publicity stunt. And I have to concur, that indeed it is possible.
Labels: Moonbattery
