With the Republican Party swinging back towards its isolationist roots, a man in Florida takes the stage, insisting that the U.S. must be “the watchman on the wall of world freedom.” But as Tim Padgett writes over at Global Spin, Rubio’s vision of idealistic intervention may have local roots.
In reality, Rubio doesn’t have much of a choice. As a conservative Cuban-American – and especially as a hard-liner on U.S. Cuba policy – he wouldn’t have the luxury of softening his pro-active principles even if he wanted to. When he became a Senator, Rubio didn’t just adopt the fiscal fury of his Tea Party backers; he also inherited the mantle of a Cuban exile leadership that still believes in cold war-style regime change in Havana, even after strategies like a 49-year-old U.S. trade embargo have utterly failed to dislodge the communist Castro brothers.
That siege philosophy regarding Cuba tends to dictate that Cuban-American politicos like Rubio bang the drum for the eradication of oppression anywhere else in the world. That’s evident in Rubio’s strong criticism of President Obama for not leading the charge in Libya (even as many Republicans now blast Obama for getting too involved there) and in his threats this month to put the kibosh on Obama’s nominee for Ambassador to Nicaragua, Jonathan Farrar. Rubio feels that because Farrar showed himself too soft on the Castros while recently serving as the U.S.’s top diplomat in Havana, he would therefore be too soft on Nicaragua’s authoritarian leftist President, Daniel Ortega. (Rubio’s questionable assertion that Farrar didn’t adequately engage Cuban dissidents, however, is fairly disingenuous given how long Cuban-American leaders once dismissed those dissidents as sell-outs because they didn’t advocate violent government overthrow.)
Read the entire Padgett piece here.