Cuba decision marks a bet by Obama

that Cold War politics have turned a

corner

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) vowed to block moves by President Obama toward
normalizing relations with the Cuban government. (Reuters)

By Karen Tumulty and Anne Gearan December 17 at

7:44 PM
President Obamas surprising move toward normalizing relations with Cuba amounts
to a big bet that the nation and, particularly, the crucial swing state of Florida has
turned a political corner from the Cold War era.
Obamas decision aligns with a growing sentiment that current Cuba policy has
become counterproductive. Among those making that argument has been former
secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumed frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, who said the new stance has
the potential to encourage real and lasting reforms for the Cuban people.
But the new stance immediately came under challenge. Many leading Republicans
and one Democratic senator denounced the president as feckless, overreaching and
naive in his negotiations with the government of President Ral Castro, the brother of

longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

This entire policy shift announced today is based on an illusion, on a lie, the lie and
the illusion that more commerce and access to money and goods will translate to
political freedom for the Cuban people, said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is
considering a presidential bid and whose parents emigrated from Cuba in the 1950s.
All this is going to do is give the Castro regime, which controls every aspect of Cuban
life, the opportunity to manipulate these changes to perpetuate itself in power.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush considered the GOPs 2016 front-runner after
announcing an exploratory bid Tuesday had called for strengthening the embargo
against Cuba as recently as two weeks ago.

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In less than two minutes, here are the key moments from President
Obama's speech about changes to relations with Cuba on Wednesday.
(Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
On his Facebook page Wednesday, Bush wrote that the administrations decision to
restore diplomatic ties with Cuba is the latest foreign policy misstep by this President,
and another dramatic overreach of his executive authority. It undermines Americas

credibility and undermines the quest for a free and democratic Cuba.
Among other possible Republican 2016 presidential candidates, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas
and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin criticized Obama on Cuba, while Sen. Rand Paul of
Kentucky, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and several others were quiet.
The bulk of the GOP comments suggested that, for now at least, the conservative base
remains firmly committed to keeping relations with Cuba in the deep-freeze where
they have been for half a century. That position, however, is increasingly at odds with
the view of the electorate at large.
More than a decade ago, polls began showing a tilt in public sentiment toward
normalizing ties with the island 90 miles from the tip of Key West, Fla. In 2009, a
Washington Post-ABC News survey found that two-thirds of Americans supported
restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, while only 27 percent opposed doing so.
The old ideological and economic battle lines have also been fading on the ground.
Even as a trade embargo has remained in place, nearly 600,000 U.S. travelers went to
Cuba last year the majority of them Cuban Americans. Business interests have
pushed for more openness, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pledged its support for
Obamas decision.
Public opinion in Florida and in the country is moving to moderation on Cuba, and
Obama is effectively using his political capital to make a long-anticipated shift that
history and the U.S. public will support, Ted Piccone, a senior fellow with the
Brookings Institutions Latin America Initiative, wrote in an e-mail from Havana.
Although the Cuban American population has long been identified with the Republican
Party, that allegiance also has shifted. The change is largely generational, with those
two or three generations removed from the ones who fled Castros regime in the 1950s
and 1960s more open to voting Democratic.

Posted by Thavam