Restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba was a shrewd move by the Obama administration. It not only makes sense internationally (The US and Cuba share a number of environmental, weather-related, and anti- narco trafficking interests even if they don't like each other very much), but domestically as well.

I suspect that the Obama administration is quite aware as to how much support for the embargo (particularly the travel restrictions) has faded since the Miami hard-liners foisted Shrub on us in the 2000 elections. Many of the hard-liners who supported the embargo have since died off, their children have realized that they can't turn the Cuban political clock back to 1954, and later arrivals far more often than not oppose the embargo and travel restrictions anyway.

There is also hostility to the embargo among the Republicans. That opposition is not only present among the "business Republicans" seeking to profit from the embargo's long-overdue demise, but deep within the gut feelings of so many Republicans who hate what they call "losers."

This latter group should not be ignored. Many of this group not only hate the helpless, the impoverished, the handicapped, and shirtsleeve Americans, but they also foster a not-so-hidden loathing of the Cuban émigré right as "losers," "losers," they'd say because it's been over 60 years since Fidel Castro took power and the right-wing Cuban emigres are still on the outside looking in and not running the island.

I don't doubt that Republicans like Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and others will try to keep the embargo in place and even try to strengthen it. It's still popular inside the right-wing bubble and on places like Faux Noise Propaganda.

But here's the sting--keeping the embargo, travel restrictions, and the diplomatic deep-freeze might be popular among many of the wing-nutz, but it isn't popular among the rest of the electorate. Keeping the Caribbean cold war in place might not sell to the general electorate in 2016.

heard (so far) is Menendez. He's rabidly anti-Cuba and has been forever.

http://news.yahoo.com/democratic-senator-u-shifts-cuba-clearly-intended-bypass-202909038.html;_ylt=A86.JyjqCpJUzl8AZSkPxQt.

Democratic senator: U.S. shifts on Cuba 'clearly intended' to bypass law


And thanks for your thoughtful post!

Even my right-wing Republican uncle came to oppose the Cuban embargo in the early 2000s. Lest right-wing lurkers think I'm blowing smoke from my orifices, I should point out that my uncle was a member of the Republican Pioneers and a personal acquaintance of George Dubya What's-his-name. My uncle's reasoning was an honest, mostly impartial (He was a Cold Warrior back before the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact) assessment of the situation in Cuba as it was by the turn of the millennium. My uncle said that the embargo didn't work, and ought to be discarded.

My uncle and family reminisces aside, I should point out that my uncle was relatively rational and still attached to the world as it actually exists, which would probably make him a RINO in the eyes of the Tea Party types who have turned the Republican Party into the Gathering Of Psychotics that it's become today.

The draconian policies toward Cuba needed to die decades ago.