Unforeseen Contingencies

Despite sending Democrat campaign operatives, Democrat funders, and State Department funds provided by American taxpayers, Obama lost.  Despite Obama's sabotaging of Netanyahu's speech to the U.S. Congress with the lie that the administration had not been informed, Obama lost.  Despite having Joe Biden and John Kerry meet with Isaac Herzog, Benyamin Netanyahu's main opponent, while insisting on a complete administration boycott of Netanyahu, Obama lost.  Good.  A Likud victory is a victory for free markets (it's largely been missed in the U.S. that a major issue in the Israeli election was over whether or not to expand the welfare state and increase state control of the economy) and for a non-appeasement foreign policy.  Thank heavens Likud seems to have come out on top, and Netanyahu will have a chance to form a government.

It's very telling that so much of the media narrative, in both the United States and Israel, has been that returning Netanyahu to the post of Prime Minister "damages relations between the United States and Israel."  Telling, in that it exposes the bias in the media in both countries.  In fact, Netanyahu is quite popular in the United States, among Republicans, for one, and even more among conservatives and sane libertarians (such as yours truly).  The bad relations are between Bibi and Barack Hussein, his administration, and that part of the foreign policy establishment that sides with him.  They certainly are not the totality of "the United States," and once Obama is gone from office it's hard to see why the alleged bad relations between the two countries would persist.  The media definition of  "United States" counts the majority party in Congress and a substantial share of the American electorate as "not part of the United States."  That's par for the course, since we live in a world where the Obama and co. say there's no such thing as Islamic extremism, and but regularly declare his political opponents "extremists" and sets the IRS and DHS after them.

One of the things I most appreciated about Netanyahu's campaign is that, at the end, he declared that if he returned as P.M., he would block the establishment of a Palestinian state.  I appreciated this for two reasons.  First, a Palestinian state under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas is unacceptable, since Abbas declares his goal of eliminating Israel.  (So much for a two state solution.)  The more likely scenario, a Palestinian state under the murderous Hamas, would be even worse.  Second, how refreshing to hear a politician take a firm stance on a controversial position.  One can imagine a Jeb Bush, a Chris Christie, a Hillary Clinton, or a Barack Obama, trying to frame a position that appeals to a wide swath of voters, by basically speaking mush.  It's good to hear a politician take a strong position, and actually think that he means it.  These days, that kind of moral certainty too often comes from the likes of ISIS or a Putin.  It's great that one of the good guys publicly takes such a stance... and then wins.