This Time, Livni To Stay Until Political Party Good And Sunk

“I have always had the State’s interests at the forefront of my mind, and it is mere coincidence that those dynamic, fluid interests always happen to dovetail completely with my career aspirations.”

Tel Aviv, March 9 – Aspiring prime minister Tzipi Livni responded to critics today, defending her political record and reputation by vowing not to switch allegiances again until the fortunes of at least one member of her current alliance are well and truly destroyed.

Livni and her Hatnuah party allied with Isaac Herzog’s Labor Party for the upcoming elections, adding several potential parliamentary seats to Labor’s electoral hopes in exchange for a rotating premiership in which she would serve the second two years of the full four-year term, following Herzog. She did so after bolting from a previous alliance with Likud and serving as Minister of Justice. That stint, in turn, came after she abandoned Kadima to form Hatnuah – a departure that came just before Kadima suffered an electoral collapse in the 2013 campaign, falling from 29 seats to 2. Her membership in Kadima itself followed yet another switch of allegiances, from a divided Likud to the newly-formed Kadima, in November 2005.

That mercurial history has exposed Livni to charges of jumping ship in the face of impending electoral misfortune in order to save her own political skin. In the process, say critics, Livni has not only betrayed her constituency and fellow Knesset delegation members, but has also donned and doffed ideologies to appear still-relevant amid shifting political realities.

Today Livni defended her record and principles, vowing that she would remain at the head of Hatnuah and in the National Union alliance with Labor until the very end when Hatnuah, and possibly Labor as well, suffer crushing defeat and lose all political relevance.

“I have always had the State’s interests at the forefront of my mind, and it is mere coincidence that those dynamic, fluid interests always happen to dovetail completely with my career aspirations,” she insisted. “To demonstrate the sincerity of my commitment to the National Union, I hereby promise not to shift political allegiances this time until Hatnuah has been decimated and Labor discredited, if not mortally damaged.”

Herzog praised Livni for her loyalty, emphasizing that although he could shepherd Labor into political irrelevance on his own, the partnership with the ex-Likud-coalition ex-Kadima ex-Likud Livni has the potential to bring that about much sooner.

“Tzipi and I are on the same page when it comes to electoral strategy,” explained Herzog, whose party trails Likud by 3 seats in the most recent polls, each seat representing tens of thousands of voters. “We both agree that it would be imprudent to campaign primarily on the strength of an actual platform, since that would require us to commit to positions that, while they would distinguish us from [incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu, would doom us to outright defeat, both because those positions are unpopular and because we lack the political gravitas that Netanyahu brings.” Consequently, he said, the National Union campaign focuses primarily on unseating Netanyahu, rather than seriously discussing what specific alternative policies a Herzog-Livni government could offer in anything more than vague sound bites.

“It’s one thing to run against Likud and lose; it’s another to have a hope of defeating them because of this alliance and then suffer a devastating blow. That wouldn’t be possible without Tzipi.”