http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/marco-rubio-says-cuba-talks-are-absurd-113639.htmlRepublicans livid over Cuba talks, call it appeasement
By Katie Glueck and Seung Min Kim
12/17/14 11:07 AM EST
Updated 12/17/14 12:22 PM EST
Republican reacted with outrage Wednesday over the Obama administration’s move to normalize relations with Cuba, with some lawmakers casting it as appeasement and the product of extortion by the communist Castro government.
Sen. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and a likely Republican presidential contender, promised to try to derail the White House’s efforts, even as he had mixed feelings on news that Alan Gross, an American held in Cuba for five years, was being released as part of an agreement with Havana.
“It’s part of a long record of coddling dictators and tyrants that this administration has established,” the Florida senator said during an appearance on Fox News. He insisted that the White House’s plans, which include opening an embassy in Havana, won’t result in more economic freedom or democracy in Cuba, which has spent decades under a U.S. embargo.
“This notion that somehow being able to travel more to Cuba, to sell more consumer products, the idea that’s going to lead to some democratic opening is absurd,” Rubio said. “But it’s par for the course with this administration constantly giving away unilateral concessions … in exchange for nothing.”
Rubio said he was glad that Gross was freed, but he slammed the notion that Gross’s release could be tied to broader negotiations with the island nation. Three Cubans who had been jailed in the U.S. also were released.
“It puts a price on every American abroad,” Rubio said. “Governments now know if they can take an American hostage, they get very significant concessions.”
In a subsequent statement, Rubio pledged to use his role as incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee “to make every effort to block this dangerous and desperate attempt by the president to burnish his legacy at the Cuban people’s expense.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who announced Tuesday that he is seriously exploring a presidential bid, told local reporters he was “delighted” Gross was being released, calling it “spectacular news for himself and his family.”
Bush was expected to issue more comments on the broader talks with Cuba later Wednesday. Earlier this month, the Republican said that “instead of lifting the embargo, we should consider strengthening it.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, another Cuban-American Republican from Florida, said he welcomed Gross’s release even as he blasted President Barack Obama as the “Appeaser-in-Chief.”
“President Obama’s decision to allow the Castro regime to blackmail the United States and abandon our pro-democracy principles is an outrage,” he said in a statement. “These changes to policy will further embolden the Cuban dictatorship to continue brutalizing and oppressing its own people as well as other anti-American dictatorship and terrorist organizations.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is vocal on foreign policy, tweeted that the development is “an incredibly bad idea.”
And incoming Rep. Carlos Curbelo, another Florida Republican, offered a statement in English and Spanish that depicted the holding of Gross as extortion and called normalizing relations “reckless conduct that damages U.S. national security and benefits Cuba’s dictators.”
Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, was more measured, saying in a statement that he heard the news Wednesday morning and that “as of now there is no real understanding as to what changes the Cuban government is prepared to make.”
