Kadima leader Tzipi Livni attacked the Likud in a speech at Kadima's council meeting Thursday night, kicking off a negative campaign intended to boost the party in the wake of polls indicating that it has fallen far behind the Likud.
"I left the Likud because of its internal management problems and its inability to advance any plan on any issue," Livni said. "It's a party that can only say no on every issue. The Likud is still the same Likud, it still has no direction and the people are the same people."
Kadima strategists said the attacks on the Likud would intensify next week with Internet advertisements highlighting historical inaccuracies and extremist statements Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu had made in the past. The ads will show Netanyahu praising the then-censored attack on a Syrian nuclear facility and remind voters of the budget cuts he made that hurt the poor.
The strategists' goal is to counter the positive messages of politicians who fought with Netanyahu in the past and have now rejoined Likud and to emphasize that the race is a choice between the leaders of the two parties.
