Did Obama’s new Cuba policy just launch Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign?
“It puts a price on every American abroad.”
As the son of parents who left Cuba for a better life in America, this is a subject Rubio cares about deeply.
He’s also extremely well versed in the history of America’s relationship with Cuba as you’ll see in the videos below.
Watching these videos, though, I can’t help wonder whether Obama’s new Cuba policy will be the spark that launches Rubio’s presidential campaign. I’ve never seen him more impassioned and he now is the leader of the opposition in an area, foreign policy, for which he was not known.
One of Rubio’s main concerns is the precedent it sets for any government which might think it can use hostages as a bargaining point. Susan Jones of CNS News reports:
Rubio: Obama’s New Cuba Policy ‘Puts a Price on Every American Abroad’
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he’s glad that American “hostage” Alan Gross has been released from a Cuban prison after five years, but he opposes the process by which his release was secured — “because it puts a price on every American abroad.”
“Governments now know that if they can take an American hostage, they can get very significant concessions from the United States.”
As part of the deal to free Gross, the United States will release three Cuban spies: “They’re not just benign Cuban spies,” Rubio — the son of Cuban exiles — told Fox News on Wednesday. “These Cuban spies were involved in providing information to the Cuban government that led to the murder of U.S. citizens in the infamous shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft back in 1996.
“These were airplanes that used to patrol the Straits of Cuba to find people on rafts and save their lives. The Cuban government shot them down over international waters and they did so largely based on information that at least one of these spies provided them.
This video shows an appearance Rubio made on Fox yesterday morning:
Rubio was far from finished at that point.
From Katie Glueck and Seung Min Kim at Politico:
Sen. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and a likely 2016 presidential contender, was perhaps the most ardent voice to denounce the administration, and one of several Florida Republicans to do so. He and others in the GOP promised to try to derail the White House’s efforts, even as at least one Republican-leaning group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the news of improved ties with Cuba.
“It’s part of a long record of coddling dictators and tyrants that this administration has established,” Rubio said on Fox News, one of multiple media appearances he made Wednesday. 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, a country that survived decades under a U.S. embargo.
This is an appearance Rubio made on Special Report last night:
Featured image via MRC video.
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Comments
Supporter of mass immigration = no sale.
Hard to see someone like Rubio being acceptable to the Republican base after Obama’s current atrocities, let alone what’s going to happen in the next couple of years. As has been noted elsewhere, “no one saw this coming”, not that we’re really surprised.
a spark launched the hindenburg too.
we know how that worked out.
being right for once does not make him suddenly honest.
I am a conservative and a Republican and I’d vote for Rubio. I am no fan of illegal immigration, but it is not my litmus test issue. And yeah, I know I’ll get down-voted for that opinion because it’s not doctrinaire. I can take it.
It is not only a matter of Comprehensive Amnesty and Permanent Open Borders. What kills Rubio as a candidate is that he deliberately and blatantly lied during his campaign about his stand on Amnesty, and then immediately collaborated with the enemies of the country to try to impose it.
This is no different than the Republicans campaigning in the midterms on opposing Obama on Obamacare, and Amnesty; then after we gave them a wave election victory immediately working with the Democrats to fully fund both items for half the next Congress, and in addition doing it in such a way as to ratify Obama’s rule by Decree.
It does not matter what Rubio or the Institutional Republicans say now, or claim that they believe now. They both have a recent history of deliberately lying to their voters on matters that ARE their litmus tests. What basis is there to believe them when suddenly they claim to be on our side?
Words are cheap. Actions count. If they [and he, in the case of Rubio] do not show by actions that they are really opposed to the regime, there is no reason to listen to their words.
You nailed it Subotai.
I’d take Marco over Jeb…but would there really be a difference?
Not just “no”, but H*LL NO!
As noted above, Rubio is an IMMIGRATION TURNCOAT.
He’s got a silken tongue, and otherwise quite conservative…
…BUT: NOTHING ELSE MATTERS if illegals an others discarding the Rule Of Law take over this country.
Did I mention…H*LL NO!
I think we crossed the River Styx, when we traded Beau Burkdahl(sp?) for the Taliban 5.
Now, it’s kind of like the old joke where a man at a party asks a woman, that he could obviously not normally get,if she “would sleep with him for $1,000,000.00.” When she said “yes,” his response was then would she “be willing to do it for $.50?” Insulted, she responds, what kind of a girl do you think I am. His logical and perfectly true response was “I think we’ve already established that. Now, we’re just negotiating a price.”