Monday, December 10, 2012

Likud Beitenu's Chief Strategist is Back with New Poll Data

The Architect (OK, call him the Republican Strategist), Arthur Finkelstein is back to advise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political partner Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on the Likud Beitenu’s campaign narrative and strategy ahead of the January 22 election.

According to "Walla Elections", Finkelstein, is expected to provide Netanyahu and Lieberman new polls indicating that their party would win more than 40 seats.

Finkelstein is mentioned in the Israeli press as "The Republican powerhouse consultant", whose campaigns "have helped shape first the American political landscape, he’s the guy who made “liberal” a bad word," Dina Kraft describes him in profile for Haaretz. "He was left bruised in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, having forecasted a handy Romney victory to his Israeli clients," she adds to his resume. 

Hence, Finkelstein is also known as the mastermind behind Bibi's stunning victory in 1996, by picking the right line of "Peres will Divide Jerusalem" in the finale days of the campaign, to sway voters away from Peres, as blood was being spilled in horrendous bomb explosions on buses and city centers in the heart of Israel. Finkelstein to his credit, has also served as Lieberman's strategist over the last 3 Knesset campaign, a party - headed by a former bar bouncer and a Director-General of the Prime Minister's Office - that has only grown, from 4 in 2003 to 11 seats in 2006, and up to 15 in the 2009 election.

Finkelstein, the Brooklyn-born son of a taxi driver, is a gay Jewish Republican who married his partner for 40 in Massachusetts in 2005, according to his profile in Haaretz.

What remains to be seen, is the campaign strategy for a party that is ahead in the polls ever since, and that faces no real opponent, to at least expand it's base of support among the Traditional Israeli voter.