Opossition Leader's Opposition - Mofaz: Kadima will sink in Opposition

(Haaretz- yossi verter). After 50 days in the opposition, Shaul Mofaz, who was just one little word away (the word being the "yes" Tzipi Livni never uttered in her negotiations with Netanyahu) from being defense minister, is still beside himself. We really blew it, he's telling his Kadima cohorts. In a number of radio interviews as well as during a feverish round of private talks with Kadima MKs, Mofaz has been ruing the complacency that overtook his colleagues and him during the post-election discussions between Tzipi and Bibi. We thought, he tries to explain, that the high bar Livni set was a tactic designed to raise the price. Turns out it was not. She didn't really want to join the coalition. She didn't believe Labor would join. I told her from the get-go that Barak would join. That he had no other option, personally or politically. Just watch, Mofaz tells his party colleagues - you'll see that Labor will come out strengthened from being in the government. They were smart to do what they did. We could have established a big and genuine unity government, a strong government, he says. Two years from now, the world, and Israel along with it, will emerge from the economic crisis. The government will say: We deserve the credit. Something may also be achieved on the Iranian front before long - after all, the time of reckoning is fast approaching. The government will take credit, and rightly so. At some point dramatic security situations will call for action. Will they be dealt with by the government or by the opposition? What will we do in the opposition? Submit parliamentary questions? (He spits out that last phrase with bottomless scorn.) Does anyone really think this government will fall within a year, Mofaz asks rhetorically. Which of its members is going to make that happen? Barak? Eli Yishai? Avigdor Lieberman? Which of them has an interest in new elections? Mofaz adds sadly - we in Kadima had a motto: First the country, then the party, then the individual. Something got messed up here. If we were part of the government, Mofaz tells his colleagues, Bibi's U.S. visit would have looked totally different. If we were setting the tone, our positions would be heard throughout the world. Bibi offered to let [Tzipi] run the diplomatic negotiations. So he didn't come out and say, two states for two peoples. It's actions that count. Given what he's heard from others in the party faction, Mofaz doesn't expect Livni to have such an easy time of it in the future. Should Netanyahu call on Kadima - in the event of a political, diplomatic or security crisis - party members won't be so quick to do Livni's bidding