The politics of President Obama’s new U.S. policy towards Cuba does not fall neatly along partisan lines. Plenty of Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are celebrating the White House’s announcement, while a handful of Democrats, most notably Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), aren’t at all pleased.
But among all critics, few have been as vocal and visible today as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who’s been apoplectic about the administration’s breakthrough. That’s not unexpected, though the far-right senator’s complaints seem deeply flawed and poorly thought out.
In an official written statement, for example, the Florida Republican called the White House’s shift “inexplicable.”
“While business interests seeking to line their pockets, aided by the editorial page of The New York Times, have begun a significant campaign to paper over the facts about the regime in Havana, the reality is clear.”
It almost sounds as if Rubio thinks “business interests” – in this case, farmers and Rubio’s allies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – should accept limits on free enterprise, even as other countries trade with an American neighbor. Doesn’t the senator usually see “business interests” as “job creators”?
“But most importantly, the regime’s brutal treatment of the Cuban people has continued unabated. Dissidents are harassed, imprisoned and even killed. Access to information is restricted and controlled by the regime.”
Right, and that’s after 54 years of the exact same U.S. policy. How many more decades of a failed policy would Rubio recommend to improve the conditions of the Cuban people? Isn’t it at least possible that Cubans will benefit better relations and expanded opportunities with the United States?
Rubio later said Obama’s moves “will tighten” the Castro regime’s grip on power “for decades.” I suppose that’s possible, but my follow-up question for the senator is simple: hasn’t the Castro regime already had a tight grip on power for decades? Has the old, ineffective U.S. policy weakened that grip in any way whatsoever?
Rubio then raised concerns that normalized relations won’t address Cuba’s human rights record, which is an odd argument coming from a senator who was defending torture just last week.
The senator saved some of his most striking material for Fox News.
“At minimum, Barack Obama is the worst negotiator that we’ve had as president since at least Jimmy Carter, and maybe in the modern history of the country.”
Didn’t Jimmy Carter negotiate the Camp David Accords, one of the most sensitive and successful diplomatic endeavors of this generation? Couldn’t Rubio think of a less ridiculous comparison?
As if all of this wasn’t quite enough, the Floridian decided it’d also be a good idea to lecture the Pope.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) torched President Barack Obama’s new policy aimed at normalizing U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba on Wednesday, and addressed Pope Francis’ support for the president’s move.
“My understanding is that the influence that His Holiness had was on the release of Mr. [Alan] Gross, which I’ve not criticized. As I said, I’m happy that he’s with the Cuban people [sic]. I would also ask His Holiness to take up the cause of freedom and democracy, which is critical for a free people — for a people to truly be free,” Rubio, a Catholic whose parents immigrated from Cuba to flee the Castro regime, told reporters.
Look, I realize that foreign policy obviously isn’t Marco Rubio’s strong suit. In September, when he called for a “permanent” U.S. troop presence in the Middle East, his entire argument seemed quite foolish. A month later, Rubio urged President Obama to follow a specific course against Islamic State militants, and then he complained bitterly when Obama did exactly what the senator suggested.
If Rubio is going to make this the centerpiece of a national campaign, he’s going to need a more persuasive pitch.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 17, 2014
December 19, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Cuba, Foreign Policy, Marco Rubio | Bob Menendez, Free Enterprise, Human Rights, ISIS, Pope Francis, Republicans, Torture, Trade Embargo, U.S. Chamber of Commerce |
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Here’s a little blast from the recent past, a meeting of the minds between Bill O’Reilly and Brit Hume in October 2013:
O’Reilly asked Hume, “Is he just not interested? Is he bored with it? Is it deniability?”
Hume said that unlike some past presidents, Obama is “not a micromanager” and prefers to rely on others. O’Reilly charged that right now, Obama’s performance is so bad, he’s in “major trouble on the history front” and has to be “in the bottom ten” in a ranking of all the U.S. presidents.
This was a major theme in conservative and not-so-conservative media for quite some time: Obama is passive, he’s bored, he just doesn’t care anymore, he’s like a senior two weeks from graduation who just can’t wait to get it over with. Here’s a piece from June by Ron Fournier passing on complaints about Obama from anonymous Democrats, including “his disengagement from the political process and from the public.” “He’s bored and tired of being president,” Fournier cites one as saying. Not long after, Fox News actually took a poll asking people, “Do you think Barack Obama wants to be president anymore?”
I suppose that six months ago Obama might have been bored with some parts of his job. One certainly couldn’t blame him for being bored with the process of trying to get something out of Congress. But I always thought the charge was absurd. People do all kinds of armchair psychologizing of the president based on the occasional snippets they see of him in public, combined with the opinions they hear from other people who, like them, have no access to the actual person. I’m not saying I haven’t been guilty of that from time to time, but you have to be careful about imputing attributes and psychological states to him just based on whether you approve of the things he’s done or hasn’t done lately. And that’s what it usually comes down to.
But with today’s announcement that we’ll be undertaking a normalization of relations with Cuba—a mere 54 years after the embargo began—combined with other recent moves on immigration and climate change, Obama is looking pretty engaged. The approaching end of his term and the loss of both houses of Congress seem to have liberated him. While the Cuba deal was apparently in the works for many months, it wasn’t something in the headlines like immigration. Who knows how many other surprises Obama may have in store.
And while it’s true that there are limits to things the president can do just with executive action, this could be a new model for a way to use the bully pulpit. Obama can’t actually end the embargo entirely—that would require an act of Congress. But by taking some concrete action where he can, he’s forced the issue onto the agenda. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a move in Congress to finally bring the embargo to an end. For some time, there have been Democrats and Republicans who favored it; because of what Obama has done, they might have the opportunity to move that legislation forward. He could try to create the same kind of evolution in other areas.
In any case, the man certainly looks like he’s been set free. He doesn’t have to worry about getting reelected or about losing Congress (done both), so he can go back to see what fell off the to-do list and do things that he’s always wanted to, whether they were politically risky or not. This might be an interesting two years after all.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 18, 2014
December 19, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Cuba, Politics, President Obama | Bill O'Reilly, Brit Hume, Climate Change, Congress, Conservatives, Cuban Embargo, Executive Orders, Fox News, Immigration Reform |
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When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) angrily disagrees with President Obama, it’s about as common as the sunrise. But when McCain reject his own views from a few years ago, something more important is happening.
Yesterday, for example, McCain issued a joint press statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), offering a rather predictable condemnation.
“We agree with President Obama that he is writing new chapters in American foreign policy. Unfortunately, today’s chapter, like the others before it, is one of America and the values we stand for in retreat and decline. It is about the appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs, and adversaries, diminishing America’s influence in the world. Is it any wonder that under President Obama’s watch our enemies are emboldened and our friends demoralized?”
To be sure, the rhetoric is stale and tiresome. Almost all of this, practically word for word, has been a staple of McCain press releases for six years. The point is hardly subtle: when it comes to foreign policy and international affairs, whatever President Obama supports, John McCain opposes, whether it makes sense or not.
That’s not the interesting part. Rather, what McCain neglected to mention yesterday is the fact that he used to support the very changes the Obama White House announced yesterday.
In May 2008, the Arizona Republican was his party’s presidential nominee, and he traveled to Miami to endorse the same U.S. policy towards Cuba that’s been in place since 1960. The Wall Street Journal ran this report at the time, noting the degree to which McCain had “evolved” on the issue.
Sen. McCain’s stance on Cuba appears to have evolved since the 2000 presidential primaries, when he faced Mr. Bush, then the Texas governor. At the time, Mr. Bush played to the Cuban-American exile community and Mr. McCain acted the moderate, recalling his role in normalizing relations between the U.S. and Vietnam and saying the U.S. could lay out a similar road map with the regime.
What’s more, as long-time readers may recall, the Miami Herald reported in 1999 that McCain was the only Republican presidential candidate that cycle who believed “there could be room for negotiation on the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.”
A year later, McCain told CNN, “I’m not in favor of sticking my finger in the eye of Fidel Castro. In fact, I would favor a road map towards normalization of relations such as we presented to the Vietnamese and led to a normalization of relations between our two countries.”
Going back further, to 1994, McCain opposed cutting off remittances because it punished people “whose misfortune it is to live in tyranny.”
In other words, what McCain used to believe is largely the opposite of what McCain said yesterday. One can only speculate as to why the senator shifted – perhaps McCain reflexively opposes everything Obama supports, maybe he’s moved much further to the right in recent years, perhaps it’s a little of both – but the previous versions of the senator probably would have been quite impressed with the president’s announcement yesterday.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 18, 2014
December 19, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Cuba, Foreign Policy, John McCain | Conservatives, Cuban Embargo, Fidel Castro, Lindsey Graham, Republicans, Vietnam |
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For a guy who was supposed to be mired in unpopularity and bored with his job, Barack Obama is sure making life hard for Republicans, not to mention complicating their task in winning the White House in 2016. The Republican reaction to his decision to normalize relations with Cuba may have been exactly what everyone expected, but it shows just how trapped those who want to get the GOP presidential nomination are. They’re snared by the past, by the need to oppose everything that Obama does, and by what we might consider the base of their base — older voters for whom Cold War antagonisms still feel fresh, even as the rest of the country is leaving them behind.
Every Republican contender who found himself facing a microphone yesterday condemned the decision to normalize relations, none more so than Marco Rubio, who appeared on over a dozen TV programs to condemn it. While there’s no doubt that Rubio’s position is sincere (he’s the child of Cuban immigrants), consider what position you’d be in if you were a GOP contender who actually thought this move was overdue. While both parties have supported the embargo and a policy of unceasing antagonism toward the Castro regime for decades, your party held that belief particularly close to its heart. In order to win the nomination, you’re going to need the support of lots of older voters. For them, the Cold War defined their political coming-of-age and most of their lives. Vigorous anti-communism was at the core of what it meant to be a conservative, along with support for low taxes, small government, and traditional social values. Their kids and grandkids may see opposition to communism as an issue that’s in the past, but it’s still important to the way those older voters think about the world.
This means that while some Republican politicians (like Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona) may support normalizing relations, if you want to get the GOP presidential nomination, it just isn’t an option. And that’s despite the fact that not only is normalization supported by a majority of Americans, but also in some polls even a majority of Republicans support it, or if not a majority then nearly so. For instance, in this 2009 Gallup poll (they haven’t asked recently), 42 percent of Republicans supported re-establishing diplomatic relations, 44 percent supported ending the trade embargo, and 57 percent supported ending travel restrictions. Or look at this poll from the bipartisan Atlantic Council earlier this year:
As on many other issues, the passage of time and the change of generations make a move away from the traditional Republican position all but inevitable. Even a majority of Cuban-Americans in Florida now support ending the embargo. In the time period in which so many Republicans still live psychologically — the 1980s, when Reagan was president, we knew who our enemies were, and everything was going great — such a thing would have been inconceivable. It’s happening because the children and grandchildren of those who fled Castro’s regime don’t have the same intense feelings that the immigrant generation had, and they don’t see what continuing Cuba’s isolation will accomplish.
Despite these changes in the broader population and among Republican voters in particular, a candidate seeking the presidential nomination can’t take the risk of alienating the older voters who will play such a key role in the GOP primaries. And by bringing the issue to the front pages and the top of the policy agenda, Barack Obama has forced them to loudly take a position that will hurt whoever the nominee is in the general election. Not bad for a lame duck.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 18, 2014
December 19, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Cuba, GOP Presidential Candidates, Marco Rubio | Cold War, Communism, Conservatives, Cuban Embargo, Older Voters, Raul and Fidel Castro, Republicans |
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President Barack Obama made the dramatic announcement Wednesday that his administration is ending efforts to isolate Cuba that go back more than 50 years. While Congress will have to decide whether to end a formal economic embargo and a ban on casual tourism, senior administration officials said in a White House conference call that they would do everything within their power to end what Obama called a “failed policy.”
“Isolation has not worked,” said Obama from the White House.
Isolation has not helped to promote human rights in Cuba, it has not led to the downfall of the Castro government, and it is a policy carried out by the United States alone in the world. “I do not believe we can continue doing the same thing for five decades and expect a different result,” said Obama in a none too subtle allusion to a popular definition of insanity.
The initiative comes after 18 months of secret talks, with a major impetus provided by Pope Francis, who hosted the final discussions between Cuban and U.S. officials at the Vatican in the fall. (We should have known something was up when Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro shook hands at Nelson Mandela’s funeral a year ago.)
On Tuesday, Obama and Raul Castro spoke on the telephone for the better part of an hour, going down the checklist of measures that had been agreed upon in the negotiations.
These included a swap of three Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States for the last 15 years in exchange for an unnamed “U.S. intelligence asset” who has spent the last two decades in Cuba’s prisons. The asset was said to have provided the vital information that led to the shutting down of three different Cuban spy operations in the United States, including one in the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The release of American contractor Alan Gross, imprisoned for the last five years, was presented by the administration as a humanitarian decision by Havana since he was not an intelligence agent—despite Cuban claims—and thus the U.S. government would not trade spies to gain his release. Clearly the liberation of Gross took place in the context of what might be called a “grand bargain.”
Other measures include the decision to reopen embassies, closed since 1961, and steps to remove Cuba from the State Department list of countries that support terrorism.
There will be a dramatic expansion of the kinds of licenses that will allow Americans to travel legally to Cuba, covering everything from journalism to humanitarian work and help to the private sector on the island. Even if “tourism” is still barred by law, it is difficult to imagine that anyone wanting to visit the island will not be able to find some category that allows that to happen. And visitors can bring up to $100 worth of Cuban cigars back to the U.S. with them.
To help with those purchases, U.S. financial institutions will be able to operate to some extent in Cuba, and, perhaps most importantly, U.S. credit cards and debit cards will start to function.
Obama is arguing that engagement is more likely to bring about change in Cuba than isolation ever did, and his new policy will try to target areas where change is needed and can be made, particularly with regard to human rights, private enterprise, and access to information. (In what may be a significant gesture, Cuba released 53 prisoners on a list provided by the Obama administration although, of course, this was presented as a sovereign decision by Havana.)
The Treasury and Commerce departments also intend to clear the way for the U.S. export to Cuba of goods that will help small private construction firms, entrepreneurs and small farmers. Telecommunications workers and investors clearly will find it easy to travel to Cuba, at least from the American side. A major part of the Obama initiative aims to get more and better Internet access for the Cuban people.
Not the least of the Obama administration’s motives is the sense that the American policy of isolating Cuba has, instead, isolated the United States. Not a single country in the world supported it, including and especially the other countries of the Americas, north and south.
Even in the darkest days of right-wing dictatorships in South America in the 1980s, even they thought it wiser to engage the Castro regime than to attack it so relentlessly and gratuitously that it had an excuse for all its own failings. More than 30 years ago, the Argentine ambassador to Havana, who served the generals in Buenos Aires, would tell visiting reporters, “the best way to make war on Castro is with peace.”
Obama couldn’t say that on Wednesday, of course.
By: Christopher Dickey, The Daily Beast, December 17, 2014
December 18, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Cuba, Foreign Policy, Raul Castro | Alan Gross, Congress, Cuban Economy, Financial Industry, Free Trade, Human Rights, Political Prisoners, Pope Francis |
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