Ariel Sharon Pulls A McCain

Tell me THIS wouldn't have happened a long time ago to the Republican Party if we had a parliamentary system of government:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is set to quit his right-wing Likud faction on Monday, Israeli media reported, and call for a snap election which he is expected to contest at the head of a new centrist party.

In a tectonic shift in Israeli politics and a boost to the peace process [sic], Sharon is expected to form a new centrist party with recently-deposed Labour leader Shimon Peres.

Why is Sharon bailing on the party he himself founded?

[M]any in the party refuse to forgive him for pulling troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip over the summer. The prime minister has been frustrated by hardliners in his party who are certain to create further problems during the next parliament [when] he tries to oversee more unilateral pullouts from the West Bank.

Since he ran for re-election in 2002 on a platform specifically opposed to such unilateral withdrawals, how did he manage to pull such a successful about face vis-a-vie Gaza?

The Labour party paved the way for a general election early next year by voting earlier Sunday to pull out of the government, ending a 10-month coalition that allowed Sharon to push through the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.

So if Sharon is forming a new "centrist" party with a left-wing appeaser like Shimon Peres, who is going to run the Labor party?

Even if Mr. Sharon's new party does well, however, the odds are that he's going to have to go into a coalition with the left. This means with the new leader of the Labor Party, Amir Peretz, who is the most left-wing leader labor has ever had as a prime ministerial candidate. One has to figure that if the retreat from Judea and Samaria is important enough for Mr. Sharon to jettison the Likud, disengagement is the part of his portfolio that he is going to want to handle himself, delegating the economy to Mr. Peretz and his comrades. [emphases added]

So, now, where does this leave Israel? Answer: in full retreat across the board. Retreat from her Muslim enemies abroad, retreat from her Muslim enemies, and free market economics, at home. The Jewish state is about to get a lot smaller, a lot poorer, and a lot weaker.

And it's all due to the actions of the man who was once his country's most dogged, determined defender.

Might as well usher in the False Prophet, for it looks as if Ariel Sharon has set the stage for him.