Obama Meets Castro: GOP Goes Berserk

In most things today's Republican Party wants to believe that it is still the 1950's and/or is doing its best to roll back the clock by eroding civil rights, backing religious based oppression, and embracing ignorance.  This mindset extends, of course, to foreign policy where the GOP wants to maintain the Cold War and continue to isolate Cuba.  In contrast, Barack Obama understands the time and the world moves on and that policies must acknowledge a changed reality.  A case in point?  Obama met with Cuban President Raul Castro while attending the Summit of the Americas.  The GOP response?  Spittle flecked rants and the endorsement of policies rejected by two thirds of Americans.  The Washington Post looks at the GOP hysteria, especially among the GOP presidential candidate clown car.  Here are article highlights:

President Obama’s face-to-face meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro on Saturday angered Republican candidates vying to succeed him — and might help elevate an issue that so far hasn’t resonated widely among GOP primary voters.

Obama and Castro’s meeting lasted about an hour and focused mostly on the “practical” issues surrounding the reopening of respective embassies in both countries — including the ability of U.S. diplomats to move more freely around Cuba, according to administration officials who briefed reporters after the exchange.

A majority of Americans — and Cubans — support reestablishing diplomatic relations between the two countries and ending the decades-long economic embargo of the island nation. But Republicans controlling Congress have no plans to do so, citing Obama’s engagement with Cuba as an another example of his misguided foreign policy.

Presumed GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a longtime Miami resident, voiced his displeasure Saturday via Twitter: “Obama meets with Castro but refused to meet w/ [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]. Why legitimize a cruel dictator of a repressive regime?”

The historic meeting in Panama came just two days before Obama’s most vocal Cuba critic, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), is set to launch his presidential campaign in Miami. The freshman senator and son of Cuban parents is seeking to cast his candidacy as an historic milestone for South Florida’s influential Cuban-American community.

But nearly two-thirds of Americans support establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, according to a December Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey also showed higher support for ending the trade embargo and lifting travel restrictions.

A poll of Cuban citizens released last week, commissioned by Univision, Fusion TV and The Washington Post, found that 97 percent believe that a better relationship with the United States would benefit Cuba. There was near-unanimous agreement that the economic embargo should end.

“Instead of lifting the embargo, I would argue that we should strengthen it to put pressure on the Cuban regime,” Bush said at an event held by the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC. He added that Cuba shouldn’t be able to attend the triennial Summit of the Americas unless it signs the Inter-American Democratic charter, a document signed by members of the Organization of American States reaffirming that democracy is the main form of government in the Western Hemisphere.

The one outlier among major GOP candidates is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who gave qualified support to Obama’s new policy last December.  “The 50-year embargo just hasn’t worked,” he said in a radio interview at the time. “If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn’t seem to be working.”

The always foul Ted Cruz accused Obama of leaving the Cuban people imprisoned.  If any one is imprisoned its the GOP which is imprisoned in the past.