GOP’s dead-end Cuba gamble: Republicans’ Cold War-era tough talk won’t come to anything

Republicans vow to oppose and roll back Obama's Cuba policies, but their corporate masters won't let that happen

SIMON MALOY

After winning a great victory for communism with the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies, Barack Obama went for broke this week and surrendered to Cuba, thus ending the Cold War in a crippling defeat for global capitalism. ¡Que viva la gran revolución! ¡Venceremos!

Okay, maybe that’s not precisely what happened. But what did happen is that the White House followed through on a key portion of the president’s plan to normalize relations with our tiny communist island neighbor. In a Rose Garden ceremony yesterday, Obama officially announced that the United States and Cuba would open embassies in Havana and Washington, DC. That announcement came just over a month after Cuba was removed from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

That’s two big changes to the United States’ Cuba policy, which had remained essentially unchanged for 50 years and made precisely zero progress towards its goal of dislodging the Castro regime. But Republicans in Congress and the 2016 presidential field are, as is their wont, pushing back on the president and insisting that we stick with what hasn’t been working. The two Cuban-American Republican presidential candidates, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, vowed to block Senate confirmation of any ambassador to Cuba. House Speaker John Boehner said “relations with the Castro regime should not be revisited, let alone normalized, until Cubans enjoy freedom – and not one second sooner.” 2016 hopeful Carly Fiorina outdid everyone, promising to Hugh Hewitt that as president she " target="_blank">would close the U.S. embassy in Cuba.

I guess it’s not entirely surprising that the GOP would still be so gung-ho about fighting the Cold War more than two decades after it ended. But there’s no real reason to think that all this tough talk and posturing on Cuba will amount to anything, even if a Republican wins the White House in 2016.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/gops_dead_end_cuba_gamble_republicans_cold_war_era_tough_talk_wont_come_to_anything/