To Netanyahu's many American friends: what if a US President had said "too many Jews are voting?"
— @ChemiShalev
NY Times:
After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday’s elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.
With 99.5 percent of the ballots counted, the YNet news site reported Wednesday morning that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party had captured 29 or 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, sweeping past his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, which got 24 seats.
NY Times:
Benjamin Netanyahu was poised to return to power. But there was a cloud over his apparent turnaround, the result of an increasingly shrill campaign that raised questions about his ability to heal Israel’s internal wounds or better its standing in the world.
He said there would be no Palestinian state under his watch.
He railed against Israeli Arabs — because they had gone out to vote.
From the capitals of Europe, to Washington, to the West Bank, to the streets of Israel, even while his critics said Mr. Netanyahu had reaffirmed his reputation as a cynical, calculating politician, it appeared that his approach succeeded in drawing votes from other right-leaning parties.
The veil is off, even as the dark side won.
Matt Fuller:
Facing the prospect of an open revolt from defense hawks, the House Budget Committee is poised this week to add even more defense dollars to a budget proposal that already goes beyond President’s Barack Obama’s Pentagon spending request.
House Armed Services Committee members met early Tuesday, before the budget’s release, to sort out a strategy to get more military money into a spending plan the GOP leadership was moving ahead with despite HASC concerns.
Defense hawks threatened to band together to sink the GOP budget if changes weren’t made. Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee Chairman Michael R. Turner told defense industry representatives Tuesday morning to call Budget Committee members, call Republican leadership, and “let them know that we are in an absolute crisis.”
Through it all, Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia insisted there simply weren’t enough votes to add additional money. Not in his committee at least.
But leadership called his bluff, according to lawmakers familiar with the situation that were contacted by CQ Roll Call. Majority Whip Steve Scalise and chief deputy whip Patrick T. McHenry contacted Republicans on the panel, found out the votes were there to boost the Overseas Contingency Operations account, and now the Budget Committee is slated to adopt an amendment this week that would placate the defense hawks.
More politics and policy below the fold.
AP on another Scott Walker screwup:
The chairman of the Iowa Republican Party lashed out Tuesday at a new member of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's political team for questioning the state's role in the presidential nominating process.
Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann told The Associated Press he was troubled by veteran Republican strategist Liz Mair's recent comments about the state's political clout.
"Her statements are not only incorrect, they're rather juvenile, they're naive, they're ignorant," he said.
The
Times version:
Jeff Kaufmann, the state Republican chairman, said Mr. Walker, who leads in polls of Iowa Republicans, should dismiss Liz Mair, who was hired by Mr. Walker’s political action committee to lead online communications for his likely 2016 campaign.
“It’s obvious she doesn’t have a clue what Iowa’s all about,” Mr. Kaufmann said. “I find her to be shallow and ignorant,” he added, “and I’ll tell you, if I was Governor Walker, I’d send her her walking papers.”
As of this morning, it looks like the Walker aide has
resigned.
Dylan Byers:
The blogger Mickey Kaus has quit his job at The Daily Caller after the conservative site's editor-in-chief, Tucker Carlson, pulled a critical column about Fox News from the site, Kaus told the On Media blog on Tuesday.
"It's pretty simple," Kaus said in an interview, "I wrote a piece attacking Fox for not being the opposition on immigration and amnesty -- for filling up the airwaves with reports on ISIS and terrorism, and not fulfilling their responsibility of being the opposition on amnesty and immigration.... I posted it at 6:30 in the morning. When I got up, Tucker had taken it down. He said, 'We can't trash Fox on the site. I work there.'"
Carlson, who co-founded The Daily Caller in 2010, is a conservative contributor to Fox News and the host of its weekend edition of "Fox & Friends."
Kaus says when he told Carlson he needed to be able to write about Fox, Carlson told him it was a hard-and-fast rule, and non-negotiable.
NY Times:
After three decades of debate over its stance on homosexuality, members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted on Tuesday to change the definition of marriage in the church’s constitution to include same-sex marriage.
The final approval by a majority of the church’s 171 regional bodies, known as presbyteries, enshrines a change recommended last year by the church’s General Assembly. The vote amends the church’s constitution to broaden marriage from being between “a man and a woman” to “two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”
The Presbytery of the Palisades meeting in Fair Lawn, N.J., put the ratification count over the top on Tuesday on a voice vote. With many presbyteries still left to vote, the tally early Tuesday evening stood at 86 presbyteries in favor and 41 against and one tied.
welcome to the 21st century, folks. It's a nice place to be.